"Everything Bad is Good for you" response

The large excerpt of this book covered topics like TV, Video Games and the Internet, saying that they all grew more complex over time and show that people are becoming smarter for engaging in these mediums. Steven Johnson said that video games increased strategic thinking in gamers, teaching them to think in task/reward lines, "If I do this, this will happen, then this will happen" etc. Video Games were also said to be a good way of teaching things, his son who wouldn't have learned about the relationships between taxes and the wealth of a certain neighborhood in classroom, but instead learned it playing "The Sims". TV shows were shown to have more complex plots and make the viewer think about things that weren't shown to get jokes or understand the plot of an episode. Complex TV shows teach their viewers to look past the obvious things and understand the subtext of the plot.

I agree with most of what he says in this text, it all seems to make sense and I understand how each of these mediums can have these different positive effects on us. It's also very refreshing to hear positive perspectives on topics like TV, the Internet and Video Games. I agree with this idea, however he didn't expand on the idea behind the relationship between the complexity of the medium and how the audience develops. People will get smarter in different ways using different mediums, but the medium isn't what makes people smarter, the quality of said medium has more to do with the positive effects than the actual way its distributed. I believe that any medium can convey a complex story, provoke thoughts and engage the audience, likewise it's also possible that the medium has a poorly written story, no new ideas or concepts and is boring and poorly made. The point I'm trying to get across is that anything can be made poorly or made well, the medium its contained in effects the way its shown, with video games the story or idea will be interacted with, with reading it will be absorbed and imagined by the reader etc. People learn from complex things, the way its shown to the audience does matter, but not as much as the complexity of the subject.

Steven Johnson makes points that praise technology which contrasts "Feed" however they don't contrast the specific points that "Feed" makes. "Feed" essentially says that technology sorts people into groups and sell things to those people and destroys their individuality, that same technology makes out culture obsessed with ridiculous fads even if they're stupid or expensive. Steven Johnson didn't make points countering those, he praised technology for its ability to make people smarter as its subjects become more complex. "Feed" states that technology and corporations distract people from what's real and important, Steven argues that people get smarter from technology because the complexity of the subjects represented by those technologies make people smarter. They both argue opposing view points but for completely different reasons.