Everything Bad Is Good for You: How Today's Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter » (Reprint)

Steven Johnson is the founder of several influential websites, including FEED, Plastic, and, currently, outside.in. A popular lecturer, he has spoken everywhere from Google to conferences such as TED.

Forget everything you've read about the age of dumbed-down, instant-gratification culture. In this provocative, intelligent, and convincing endorsement of today's mass entertainment, national bestselling author Steven Johnson argues that the pop culture we soak in every day-from The Lord of the Rings to Grand Theft Auto to The Simpsons-has been growing more and more sophisticated and, far from rotting our brains, is actually posing new cognitive challenges that are making our minds measurably sharper. You will never regard the glow of the video game or television screen the same way again.

Walter Jirn

Johnson's argument isn't strictly scientific, relying on hypotheses and tests, but more observational and impressionistic. It's persuasive anyhow. When he compares contemporary hit crime dramas like ''The Sopranos'' and ''24'' -- with their elaborate, multilevel plotlines, teeming casts of characters and open-ended narrative structures -- with popular numbskull clunkers of yore like ''Starsky and Hutch,'' which were mostly about cool cars and pretty hair, it's almost impossible not to agree with him that television drama has grown up and perhaps even achieved a kind of brilliance that probably rubs off on its viewers. About the fact-filled dialogue on shows like ''E.R.'' and ''The West Wing,'' he writes: ''It rushes by, the words accelerating in sync with the high speed tracking shots . . . but the truly remarkable thing about the dialogue is not purely a matter of speed; it's the willingness to immerse the audience in information that most viewers won't understand.''