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Everything Bad Is Good for You: How Today’s Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter
reviewed by Anthony Cocciolo - 2006
 Title: Everything Bad Is Good for You: How Today’s Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter
Author(s): Steven Johnson
Publisher: Riverhead Books, New York
ISBN: 1573223077, Pages: 238, Year: 2005
Search for book at Amazon.com
I was piping WNYC public radio into my office on an early morning in May, funneling down my Starbucks coffee and situating myself for the long day ahead. In the background, Brian Lehrer--the comforting radio voice synonymous with my daily ritual--was conversing with a brisk sounding gentleman. This chatty gentleman had written a book with an intriguing but troubling premise: todays popular culture is actually making us smarter! Realizing the books author was Steven Johnson, who had written, Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software, I was compelled to pick up a copy. Although no stranger to modern media (I have admittedly spent more than one evening watching The Apprentice.), I have remained skeptical of its influences. Perhaps the horrors of flipping through channels and accidentally landing on Fear Factor predisposed me to hesitation. Or conceivably the ghosts of Adorno and Marcuse were unduly influencing me, lightly... (preview truncated at 150 words.)
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- Anthony Cocciolo
Teachers College, Columbia University
E-mail Author
ANTHONY COCCIOLO is a technologist and doctoral student in the Communication and Education program at Teachers College, Columbia University. His research interests basically revolve around the possibilities for subjective, educative development within digitally fabricated environments. Currently, he is working to design and develop social approaches to digital environments and looking at the cognitive, affective and educational implications. For more information on Anthony’s work, please refer to his webpage at http://anthony.thinkingprojects.org.
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