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

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 Ringsto Grand Theft Autoto 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.

Steven Johnson is the bestselling author of Mind Wide Open: Your Brain and the Neuroscience of Everyday Life; Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities and Software; and Interface Culture: How New Technology Transforms the Way We Create and Communicate. A contributing editor to Wired, he writes for Discover magazine, Slate, and The New York Times Magazine.