Those Rascally Computer Games
Choking over my morning coffee as I read (New Yorker, May 16th, Brain Candy by Malcolm Gladwell) that computer and video games are increasing rather than decreasing our national average IQ scores, I looked for the disclaimer. Surely my continual drumbeat against pop culture and the dumbing down of our youth couldn’t be under serious attack.
I am, after all, a writer. We writers are continually foreverly reminded that reading is in decline and, notwithstanding Harry Potter, there are precious few upticks in any kind of reading, particularly newspapers, perhaps even the Books Section of the New Yorker. The world is inexorably going to hell in a hand basket.
Not so says Steven Johnson, author of Everything Bad Is Good for You . . . a book, no less, about how the linear boredom of the written word is getting its ass kicked by pop culture (the mother of all oxymorons). I believe it. It’s my lament. But that we’re getting smarter as a result? Give me a break!
But Johnson’s made too good …