Steven Johnson is picking up a lot of quality coverage for his new book Everything Bad Is Good For You, about how 'popular culture is making us smarter'. I'm grateful for his mention of the Play Ethic in his recommended reading notes, and I'm going through his book now for a full review for the Independent (here's my previous reviews for that paper). I'm struck by the following passage from his extract in the New York Times:
In pointing out some of the ways that popular culture has improved
our minds, I am not arguing that parents should stop paying attention
to the way their children amuse themselves. What I am arguing for is a
change in the criteria we use to determine what really is cognitive
junk food and what is genuinely nourishing. Instead of a show's violent
or tawdry content, instead of wardrobe malfunctions or the F-word, the
true test should be whether a given show engages or sedates the mind.
Is it a single thread strung together with predictable punch lines
every 30 seconds? Or does it map a complex social network? Is your
on-screen character running around shooting everything in sight, or is
she trying to solve problems and manage resources? If your kids want to
watch reality TV, encourage them to watch ''Survivor'' over ''Fear
Factor.'' If they want to watch a mystery show, encourage ''24'' over
''Law and Order.'' If they want to play a violent game, encourage Grand
Theft Auto over Quake. Indeed, it might be just as helpful to have a
rating system that used mental labor and not obscenity and violence as
its classification scheme for the world of mass culture.
Kids and grown-ups each can learn from their increasingly shared
obsessions. Too often we imagine the blurring of kid and grown-up
cultures as a series of violations: the 9-year-olds who have to have
nipple broaches explained to them thanks to Janet Jackson; the
middle-aged guy who can't wait to get home to his Xbox. But this
demographic blur has a commendable side that we don't acknowledge
enough. The kids are forced to think like grown-ups: analyzing complex
social networks, managing resources, tracking subtle narrative
intertwinings, recognizing long-term patterns. The grown-ups, in turn,
get to learn from the kids: decoding each new technological wave,
parsing the interfaces and discovering the intellectual rewards of
play. Parents should see this as an opportunity, not a crisis. Smart
culture is no longer something you force your kids to ingest, like
green vegetables. It's something you share.
That's the kidult space which interactive technology opens up, for sure (I've blogged on this consistently). But I think Steven might be being a little sanguine about it (and maybe I've been in the past too). I've just been sitting with my daughters, as they investigated Black and White on the PC (there's a sequel coming too).
As my girls debate whether they should strike fear into villagers to get them to support their gods, or seduce them with all-day dancing and revelry, and whether cornucopia or torture is the best way to do this, I'm stunned at how far they examplify the old Whole Earth axiom: these kids are playing at "being like gods... and they might as well get good at it". I think they have to "get good" with parents as participants in these incredibly ethical technologies, as Steven suggests (and as I suggested in the Lifestyle Miltants chapter in the book). But I think we'll have to be prepared for a whole-person engagement with our children over these platforms. In my experience, few of us realise how intense it'll have to be.
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