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

The $10 billion video gaming industry is now the second-largest segment of the entertainment industry in the United States, outstripping film and far surpassing books. Reality television shows featuring silicone-stuffed CEO wannabees and bug-eating adrenaline junkies dominate the ratings. The entertainment industry is regularly accused of pushing the envelope too far. And social commentators consistently assume a race-to-the bottom and a dumbing-down of pop culture. But prominent social and cultural critic Steven Johnson argues that our popular culture has never been more intelligent.

Instead of creating a society of cheap pleasures and short attention spans, he argues that mass entertainment has been growing steadily more cognitively challenging over the past thirty years: in the nuanced decision-making of videogames, the complex narrative threads of TV dramas, and the interactive riches of the online world. He calls this upward trend “The Sleeper Curve,” after the classic sequence from Woody Allen’s mock sci-fi film, Sleeper, where a team of scientists from 2029 are astounded that 20th century society failed to grasp the nutritional merits of cream pies and hot fudge. In a similar fashion, the most debased and frequently criticized forms of mass diversion today are in fact beneficial. Johnson illustrates how the Sleeper Curve is positively altering the mental development of young people today.