Compare and Contrast of "everything Bad Is Good for You" and "mediated"

Both Steven Johnson’s Everything Bad is Good for You and Thomas DeZengotita’s Mediated deal with the idea of increased density of available choices in today’s culture. For every product and activity, there are countless decisions to be made. From food to clothing to office supplies, there are so many options to sift through. Theory and analysis of this increasing complexity for consumers of products and the media are explored by both authors.

The thesis of Everything Bad is Good for You is this: people who deride popular culture do so because so much of pop culture's subject matter is banal or offensive. But the beneficial elements of video games and TV arise not from their subject matter, but from their format, which require that players and viewers winkle out complex storylines and puzzles, getting a "cognitive workout" that teaches the same kind of skills that math problems and chess games impart. As Johnson points out, no one evaluates the benefit of chess based on its storyline or monotonically militaristic subject matter.

Mediated is difficult to describe. Imagine that you are the sun, and every flower on Earth points toward you, every leaf on every tree angles toward you. This is somewhat similar to the situation we, as 21st-century Americans, face every day. Each of us is at the center of our own solar system, surrounded every day by hundreds of flattering appeals for our attention, be it television, radio, books, magazines, billboards, etc. What effect does this have? How do we, who are practically the stars of our own reality shows, compare to our grandparents, whose media intake was but a trickle? How do kids growing up today find their way through the constant barrage of information, advertising, and entertainment? Is there anything left in the world that's still real, or is "real" the best we can hope for? DeZengotita neither celebrates nor condemns our situation, but he does a great job of describing it.

DeZengotita’s second chapter of Mediated is based on the idea that children spend more time in the adolescent phase of life due to the options they are faced with. The learning curve is the same as it used to be, but kids are faced with so much more to learn now that it takes them longer to deal with becoming an informed adult. They have to choose who they want to be as an adult, and there are just too many options for them to sort out in the amount of time their parents went through the process.

Johnson’s answer to DeZengotita’s theory on options is his view on increasing media complexity. One of his main points is that television shows and movies have become more complex as the rise of the internet is connecting people like never before while conditioning their minds to a whole new way of communicating. The fact that children growing up today can not only program the VCR better than their parents, but also create a web page, hold multiple instant message conversations and send emails to any number of people without breaking a sweat, is proof of the increase in the average person’s ability to follow a large number of simultaneous tasks/storylines/stimuli.

The best example of the connection between Johnson’s media complexity comes from Ellen Degeneres’ Here and Now comedy routine. She describes her TV watching experience in the new age of interactive programs. Frustration abounds as she tries to watch a news program, answer a poll question from the show online, read the headline ticker at the bottom of the screen and check the weather on the side of the screen, all at the same time. This task, difficult for someone who has not grown up with this kind of news presentation, is simple for a teenager today.

According to Johnson, the average IQ has raised a significant amount from generation to generation because of the change in media diet. The fact that children growing up today have so much exposure to today’s fast-paced media and entertainment means that they can process tasks and questions (the type that are tested on IQ tests) better than their parents. The Raven test, as Johnson describes it, is simple for most kids these days because of their prior exposure to similar visual puzzles and image based questions. However, it is important that Johnson acknowledges that IQ tests are not the basis for all human intelligence. Being well-educated is not the same as being smart.

One of the best points Johnson makes, is that media (television shows, movies, and video games) are being consumed by society not despite their complexity, but because of their complexity. People today have a hunger for something that is going to stretch their imaginations, challenge their beliefs, and make them think.