Gothamist interviews The Washingtonienne, Jessica Cutler
Gothamist interviews The Washingtonienne, Jessica Cutler.
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kottke.org posts about books
Fun new book from O’Reilly’s Hacks series: Astronomy Hacks
Fun new book from O’Reilly’s Hacks series: Astronomy Hacks. “This handy field guide covers the basics of observing, and what you need to know about tweaking, tuning, adjusting, and tricking out a ‘scope.”
Small corrections (from Dave Eggers) to Neal
Small corrections (from Dave Eggers) to Neal Pollack’s piece in the Times Book Review. Includes a response to the response from Neal.
Neal Pollack on how his literary persona
Neal Pollack on how his literary persona got out of hand. “For the last five years, I’ve lived with a dark, obnoxious fictional version of myself. It’s been an irritating time.”
Cory Doctorow’s new book, Someone Comes to
Cory Doctorow’s new book, Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town, is out today. As usual, the book is available for download under a Creative Commons license.
A project to offer free textbooks (as
A project to offer free textbooks (as opposed to the $120 ones you get at the college bookstore) is looking for some web design help. “In response to the textbook industry’s constant drive to maximize profits instead of educational value, I have started this collection of the existing free textbooks and educational tools available online.”
Flickr to partner with Qoop to offer on-demand photo books
Flickr to partner with Qoop to offer on-demand photo books.
The Teenager’s Guide to the Real World
The Teenager’s Guide to the Real World. The actual real world, not the MTV program.
Book critic Tanya Gold reads Rebbecca Ray’s 1000
Book critic Tanya Gold reads Rebbecca Ray’s 1000-page Newfoundland in one sitting. Hour 13: “I think my eyes are bleeding. Even commas make my face ache.”
Some additional questions and answers from the
Some additional questions and answers from the previously linked David Sedaris interview.
PBS to air three part series on
PBS to air three part series on Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel.
Collection of Chip Kidd’s book cover design
Collection of Chip Kidd’s book cover design work due out in October.
Rebecca is compiling a list of summer reading lists for 2005
Rebecca is compiling a list of summer reading lists for 2005.
A literary map of Manhattan
A literary map of Manhattan. “Here’s where imaginary New Yorkers lived, worked, played, drank, walked, and looked at ducks.”
Excerpt of The Washingtonienne’s self-titled novel
Excerpt of The Washingtonienne’s self-titled novel. Wow, that’s bad. She should have kept her day job.
Super Size Me director Morgan Spurlock has
Super Size Me director Morgan Spurlock has a book out about fast food.
New collection of nonfiction by David Foster
New collection of nonfiction by David Foster Wallace due out in December.
David McCullough’s 1776 and the tension between academic historians and popularizers
David McCullough’s 1776 and the tension between academic historians and popularizers. Also apropos to the scientists vs. pop science writers argument I’ve been hearing lately re: Blink and Everything Bad is Good for You.
Steve Leveen suggests that people stop finishing
Steve Leveen suggests that people stop finishing books they aren’t enjoying. Compares books to wine, says that we should “taste” a variety of books and only “drink” the ones we really like.
Gladwell reviews Everything Bad is Good for
Gladwell reviews Everything Bad is Good for You for the New Yorker.
Everything Bad is Good for You
A few weeks ago, I had a chance to read Steven Johnson’s new book, Everything Bad is Good for You:
Drawing from fields as diverse as neuroscience, economics, and literary theory, Johnson argues that the junk culture we’re so eager to dismiss is in fact making us more intelligent. A video game will never be a book, Johnson acknowledges, nor should it aspire to be — and, in fact, video games, from Tetris to The Sims to Grand Theft Auto, have been shown to raise IQ scores and develop cognitive abilities that can’t be learned from books. Likewise, successful television, when examined closely and taken seriously, reveals surprising narrative sophistication and intellectual demands.
To me, the most interesting question about the whole issue is whether the kind of learning that Johnson focuses on in the book outweighs the potentially negative aspects of what is generally thought of as our dumbed down and getting dumber culture…in some ways, it’s a question of the importance of how we learn versus what we learn. Unfortunately, that question lies largely outside the scope of the book and is probably an entire book of its own, but I still asked Steven about it in an email I sent him shortly after finishing the book. Here’s a gently edited excerpt:
It was hard for me to read about pop culture making us smarter because I’m so conditioned to think otherwise, but in the specific way you describe, I absolutely agree with your arguments. There’s obviously a lot more effort and learning involved watching The Apprentice than in watching The Joker’s Wild. The gaming bit of the book even influenced my thinking on this post about Katamari Damacy.
I guess I’m still kind of wondering if the positive effect you talk about balances out the negative effects (if any). If TV these days is conditioning us to be more socially agile (as far as keeping track of social connections), what else is it conditioning us to think and feel? Maybe that’s outside the question of whether it’s making us smarter or not. I ran across this interview of David Foster Wallace from 1993 a couple of weeks ago, and Wallace is a notorious TV critic, although I think he would pretty much agree with most of EBIGFY:
“But what’s seldom acknowledged is how complex and ingenious TV’s seductions are. It’s seldom acknowledged that viewers’ relationship with TV is, albeit debased, intricate and profound.”
But I don’t think he’d agree that TV is good for you:
“I think TV promulgates the idea that good art is just art which makes people like and depend on the vehicle that brings them the art.”
Is media whose primary purpose (through, as you argue, the addition of complexity) is to spend more time in the lives of the people who consume it (through repeat viewings, game replayings, etc.) really good for people? I have doubts.
Near the end of the book, you offhandedly introduce the familiar metaphor of the media diet (I think it’s only mentioned once on p194). Dunno why exactly, but it really grabbed me. On the one hand, it’s taken for granted among people I know who tend to consume lots of media that media is something that needs be approached in a dietary sense. I need to read more or watch less TV or watch better TV or balance out my online reading with some books…that’s just how we think now. I don’t think that concept existed 20-30 years ago but now there’s so much media that we need to balance it all. Tying that back into food, the hunter gatherers wouldn’t have known what a balanced diet was because they were eating an all meat and wild fruit/veg diet, basically whatever they could get their hands on. When agriculture rolled around and was greatly enhanced by industrialization, we were overwhelmed by choice and the idea of a balanced diet became a possibility and necessity.
At the same time, we have a situation in the US now where food is engineered to maximize the amount purchased by an individual. That means larger portions of high-sugar, high-fat foods….lots and lots of stuff that tastes good and makes you want to eat more of it as soon as possible. And it’s making us fat and unhealthy. Media is engineered to work much the same way and I’m wondering if that’s a good thing.
For those that want to read more about it, the book and the ideas contained therein have been excerpted in a couple of places already:
- Watching TV Makes You Smarter (NY Times Magazine)
- Everything Bad Goes Public (stevenberlinjohnson.com)
- Dome Improvement (Wired magazine)
and is being discussed in various corners of the blogosphere and in the media:
-Comments on Watching TV Makes You Smarter (kottke.org)
- Comments on Everything Bad Goes Public (kottke.org)
- Sparklines (Almost) in the Times, and Complexity Is Good For You (Anil Dash)
- Get Smart (Reason Online)
- Thinking Outside the Idiot Box (Slate)
- sleeper curve economics (Michael Sippey)
- Are Video Games Good for You? (Michael J. Madison)
- Don’t kill your television (Salon)
- Children, Eat Your Trash! (Time)
- Does watching TV make you stupid? (Stay Free!)
- Brain candy (Boston Globe)
- Bad is Good (The Sunday Times)
And Steven is trying to keep up with it all on his web site.
The NY Times’ Randy Cohen is making
The NY Times’ Randy Cohen is making a literary map of Manhattan. Not a map of where authors hung out, but where their characters did.
Steven Johnson: “Imagine an alternate world identical
Steven Johnson: “Imagine an alternate world identical to ours save one techno-historical change: videogames were invented and popularized before books”. “Reading books chronically under-stimulates the senses. Unlike the longstanding tradition of gameplaying — which engages the child in a vivid, three-dimensional world filled with moving images and musical soundscapes, navigated and controlled with complex muscular movements — books are simply a barren string of words on the page.”
Books that changed the world
Books that changed the world. Just a few of the things that have changed the world so far: cod, salt, chips, radio in Canada, sewing machines, atomic weaponry, quinine, cables, sheep, gunpower, etc. etc.
Electric Universe
This biography of electricity — and of the men and women who had a hand in uncovering its inner workings — begins in the first moments after the Big Bang. Which is probably not where your high school textbook started its exploration of the subject, nor will you find many of the oftentimes surprising stories Bodanis uses to illustrate his tale.
The first mobile phone was developed in 1879? Thomas Edison, inventor of the light bulb, “had a vacuum where his conscience ought to be”? Alexander Graham Bell, in part, invented the telephone to impress a girl (well, acutally the girl’s parents)? Samuel Morse stole the telegraph from a guy named Joseph Henry and patented it, but not before he ran for mayor of New York City on an anti-black, anti-Jew, and, most especially, anti-Catholic platform? None of that was in my high school science textbook and such is the authority of the textbook that I have a hard time believing some of it. You’re thinking maybe Bodanis is embellishing for the sake of making a more exciting story (history + electricity? wake me when it’s over!), but then you get to the 50 pages of notes and further reading on the subject and realize he’s shooting straight and science is more strange, exciting, and sometime seedy than your teachers let on.
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