Review on a youtube video: How Pop Culture Is Making Us Smarter

Review on a youtube video: How  Pop Culture Is Making Us Smarter Steven Johnson’s book, “Everything Bad Is Good For You.”

The video does not show all his speech but from what I have seen, he has made a very interesting point. He was not focusing on value, violence, or obscenity and sexual content, though these aspects raise many arguments and questions in popular culture, he was purely focusing on how much mental work was required in media culture (games and TV). I was not surprised to hear the content of both complexity and engagements have gone up over the last 30years. As a result of high technology, our culture and society have expanded significantly. Therefore, increase in complexity and engagement in media culture seemed natural progression to me. My concern is how far this complexity and engagement would go. We live in a society bombarded with information, how would media culture keep entertainment, increase the amount of mental work, and still be in a part of popular culture?

Also, I was intrigued that one of the main purposes of high technology is making our lives easier and less engaging to others such as calculation and prediction computer software which does all the work for you however media culture seems to be going the opposite direction. This may be because we feel the need to learn something from it, or it could be because more participation means more commitment. Therefore you feel attached to a particular game or a TV show that catalyse the sales figure.