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Bitter Is the New Black, a memoir by Jen Lancaster. Jen and her boyfriend had high paying jobs and lived the kind of life that I can only imagine. I, for example, have one pair of shoes, one pair of sneakers and one pair of sandals. Jen on the other hand had a closet full and I'm not talking Payless. They had a gorgeous apartment, cool cars, hung out in the hottest bars; they were everything I live to hate. But then Jen loses her job and can not find another. The top jobs, the ones she feels that she deserves, are swamped with applications from other unemployed, deserving people and the jobs she feels are below her don't want her either. Her unemployment runs out and then her boyfriend, by now her husband, is laid off. Then she becomes a real person.What I enjoyed about this book is that she is funny. I'm still giggling about the scene where she goes to pick up Marathon information for a friend and realizes that she's the only fat person in the hall. She's also sassy and is not above telling unflattering stories about herself (she cancels her COBRA because her boyfriend's insurance covers "domestic partners" never dreaming that she doesn't qualify.)
So it's not Ulysses. I fell for it and I'm going to read the follow up Bright Lights, Big Ass. Put that in your shoe, Steve, and smoke it
I couldn't help but think of Steve while reading this, especially during the chapter on video games. I think that we'll all agree that Steve doesn't understand the complexities in video games because he doesn't play them. I, however, am addicted to Sims and do think that it does indeed teach something about life to kids (I, for example, have learned that raising twins is NOT fun.) Johnson discusses how the average video game takes 40 hours to complete and that a lot of logic is involved in solving the maze like sequences. There is a continual repetition of searching for and trying various alternatives that takes patience and hones thinking skills. Read this part of the book again, Steve, because it makes sense. Better yet, play a video game start to finish.
Johnson's take on television & movies is that plots are becoming more complex, more self-referential and the storytelling less temporally linear thereby making us think while watching. He cites "Momento" and "The Usual Suspects" as examples of movies that give our brains a work out; at the end of the movie, we often want to see it again immediately just to fill in things we missed. True enough. When I watched these two movies, I hit the play button on the DVD player seconds after the closing credits ran.
As for the Internet, Johnson focuses on e-mail and blogging, making the claim that although we may spend less time reading novels, we spend a lot more time writing and that this is beneficial. How can that be a bad thing? (Steve?)
Because I enjoyed this, I'd like to read other, similar things and ask you all to make suggestions. I don't mean "similar" as in "presenting the same arguments". I just mean that I want to read other things that will make me look at things in a different way. I want to read some non-fiction that will get me thinking or will present facts in a new light. Recommend away.
Cap'n Ahab also brought me Everything Bad is Good For You by Steven Johnson. I found it quite interesting although I'm not sure that I'm completely buying it. I guess it depends a lot on what your definition of "smarter" is. His point is that the complexities of modern video games, television shows, movies and Internet are increasing our abilities to learn new things and to adapt our ways of thinking. I'll agree with that; we've all watched our children or young relatives pick up some new technology in minutes. He cites studies that indicate that IQ scores are increasing even in areas where standards of living have not. Okay, I'll go along with that.
I couldn't help but think of Steve while reading this, especially during the chapter on video games. I think that we'll all agree that Steve doesn't understand the complexities in video games because he doesn't play them. I, however, am addicted to Sims and do think that it does indeed teach something about life to kids (I, for example, have learned that raising twins is NOT fun.) Johnson discusses how the average video game takes 40 hours to complete and that a lot of logic is involved in solving the maze like sequences. There is a continual repetition of searching for and trying various alternatives that takes patience and hones thinking skills. Read this part of the book again, Steve, because it makes sense. Better yet, play a video game start to finish.
Johnson's take on television & movies is that plots are becoming more complex, more self-referential and the storytelling less temporally linear thereby making us think while watching. He cites "Momento" and "The Usual Suspects" as examples of movies that give our brains a work out; at the end of the movie, we often want to see it again immediately just to fill in things we missed. True enough. When I watched these two movies, I hit the play button on the DVD player seconds after the closing credits ran.
As for the Internet, Johnson focuses on e-mail and blogging, making the claim that although we may spend less time reading novels, we spend a lot more time writing and that this is beneficial. How can that be a bad thing? (Steve?)
My only complaint with the book is that Johnson overlooks the value of knowledge and that's where things fall apart. I think that we might be soothed by his arguments and not focus on the fact that kids "know" less than they did. It's an interesting topic for debate, so jump into the fray.
Because I enjoyed this, I'd like to read other, similar things and ask you all to make suggestions. I don't mean "similar" as in "presenting the same arguments". I just mean that I want to read other things that will make me look at things in a different way. I want to read some non-fiction that will get me thinking or will present facts in a new light. Recommend away.
21 comments:
I agree with you about video games.
For example, while playing DOOM years ago, I learned that it's better to have a Big Fucking Gun than a little one. Also, killing demons on a foreign planet is hard work.
When I played a certain version of 'Grand Theft Auto', I learned that after a hard days work of shooting cops and running over pedestrians that it's ok to go out and bang a prostitute.
When I played 'The Legend of Zelda', I learned that no matter how hard Link tries, or how many buttons he (or by extension, I) push, Zelda will simply not put out.
These are all valuable life lessons I couldn't get anywhere else.
Brian, are you making fun of me? It's okay if you are because it was damned funny.
Zelda will so put out. You have to have the ocarina and the wand, and then you have to be in the toadstool hut with her and play "Ain't No Mountain High Enough" on the ocarina and use the wand in ways I won't discuss. Then she gives it up big time.
Dude: Big. Time.
Wow, I guess I wasn't as good at Zelda as I thought I was. Next time I play I will SO try that.
You're exactly right about the knowledge thing! That was my same gripe- kids today have these souped-up brains that make them clever, intuitive, etc. but they never DO ANYTHING with them. Like washing your porsche in the driveway and never driving it.
I'm curious about your enjoyment of "Everything Bad is Good for You," Beepy. Is it a well written book, or do you largely like its premise and theories? Because the central theory seems like one that is very obviously untrue on its face. Do you actually believe that playing lots of video games is good for anyone, by any definition of "good" that you might use? Forget the tnagle of theory for just a second and answer this question based on your actual real-life experience with other people around you. Johnson, from what I can glean, isn't saying that sampling the video game world is good for you. He's saying that playing video games as a regular pasttime is good for you. Do you honestly believe for a solitary moment that that could be true?
As for myself, the idea is pure rubbish--NOT because I have some puritanical dislike of video games (I've won Super Mario Bros I, II, AND III on Nintendo, thank you very much). But because I have met and know and am friends with many people who play lots of video games, who play video games as a daily habit, and in EVERY SINGLE CASE their lives are impoverished for it and they are less as humans than they could be. In every single case it makes them more ignorant, lazier, more closeted, more narrow, more indifferent to their surroundings, less adventurous, and less considerate. Can you--or anyone on this comment board--truthfully name an instance very a serious video game havit has led to the opposite, has actually made a person better as a person?
God knows, I have my own ways of lazily impoverishing my own life, so I'm not saying I'm better--but it would be the height of ridiculousness for me to write a book purporting to justify my bad habits.
And of course I, like Brian, won the Legend of Zelda. And Castlevania. And Mega Man. but Kid Icarus bedeviled me long into my adolescence.
And not to get tiresome, but you can't actually be swallowing the idea that because of email, even though people are reading fewer novels they are writing more, and that makes them better people? Beepy! You were just trying to goad us with this, right? Writing txt message emails on a Blackberry (probably DURING class) is supposed to compensate for reading novels?
No, no, of course you are joking.
I think that Johnson was focusing more on the phenomena of blogging when he was talking about the internet increasing the amount of writing that people do. I, for example, didn't write anything until I started this blog.
As for video games, as I said I can't totally buy his arguments. I do think that he has some valid points though and, to be fair, he is not advocating playing video games as a lifestyle. He's just saying that there are positive things that come from it. He says there are two benefits "probing" and "telescoping." "Probing" is the testing of the surroundings in the game, trying out various objects and techniques to find the successful one. "Telescoping" is the process of putting various tasks in the proper order and keeping them in the player's memory until they are complete. These are skills that translate into the real world.
He also points out that kids will continue to work at solving the in-game problems where if they were a school assignment or whatever, the kids would give up. This teaches patience and persistence.
I'd say that his bottom line is that these technological innovations are increasing the capacities of our brains to learn and opening up new neuro pathways. That's what he means by "smarter." But he points out several times that it is about moderation and that we should still be reading.
I beat Super Mario Land on Gameboy, and I can beat every last one of you at Tetris. Other than that, I stink at video games.
Sam's thrown down the Gauntlet (hey, remember that aracde game? Ah, good times) - I'm shimmying over to his side of the line in the sand. Anybody willing to take the opposing view?
Speaking of reading, one of my favorite bits of the book was when Johnson imagined a world in which the technological stuff came first and reading was a recent thing. He imagines people being upset about how isolating reading is, how there is no deviation from the storyline, how passive, etc. It struck a cord with me because, as a child, I always had my nose in a book and my parents used to yell at me constantly to put the book down and, for example, join them in front of the TV. They were aware that I was shutting them out and retreating from social interaction and didn't like it one bit. I'm probably one of the few children who were ordered not to read by their parents.
Johnson isn't counting arcade games when he talks about video games. He clearly states that arcade games (he uses PacMan as the example) don't have the complexity to benefit our brains.
Yes, technically the skills Johnson calls 'probing' and 'telescoping' could have uses in the real world. But they don't, ever, for a reason that's every bit as evident as Sam asserts: no matter how much those skills increase, habitual video game players only USE them IN PLAYING VIDEO GAMES. The jump from that context to any other is never, never made. They don't get ANY smarter - they just get better and better at playing video games. Talk about insular. Nothing even remotely similar could be said about habitually reading books.
And like Sam says, the evidence of this, the actual observable evidence, is everywhere, easy to see. Beepy, you say that through playing Sims you now know that raising twins is not fun - but you DON'T know that, for two main reasons: first, unlike in real life, your twins can't develope into just anything - their paths are exactly as limited as the programming options written into the code by an 18-year-old kid in Osaka living on Doritos and listening to ipod while his parents do laundry upstairs. And second, you can walk away from your twins any time you want. In other words, raising them can't teach you anything at all about anything at all - except raising twins in Sims. That's the very definition of useless knowledge (and speaking as somebody who can rattle off the home-planets of every member of the Legion of Super-Heroes, I know what I'm talking about when it comes to useless knowledge).
If you climb out of Johnson's deliberately provocative circular reasoning and actually LOOK at the 'gamers' you know (including more than a few names in this little blogocircle), you'll see the same thing over and over again: announced goals never met, announced projects stalled or abandoned, and vast OCEANS of time that they simply don't talk about, because ALL of it was sunk into sitting slack-jawed in front of a computer, fingers flying, mind completely blank, intellect off, only the brain's reactive lizard-core firing at all.
I've seen this countless times! I talk to a young friend at noon on Wednesday (perhaps at the Brattle bargain carts), we say our good-byes, I next talk to that same friend at midnight that evening, and naturally ask what he did with his day - and SO often, the answer is a muttered version of 'stuff' that's quickly revealed to be ... nothing, just sitting on the floor playing a video game. No talk. No interaction. No variety. No accomplishment. And now it's midnight and time for bed, so that's all, that's everything that guy is going to do with his day (except that in many cases the playing goes on until three or four and the only way he manages to get himself to work the next morning is by guzzling Red Bull until he's seeing triple of everything and his heart rate is around 300).
It isn't Puritanism that keeps me from indulging in such a patent waste of time, Beepy. It's common sense and the fact that I have eyes and can see the code-surfing cyber-morons all around me every day. You also won't catch me spending seven hours every day making bouncy-balls out of rubber bands, or endlessly fluffing the pillows on my bed. I don't have to do it to see that doing it would be dumb.
Don't get me wrong: I'm overjoyed that you're blogging on a regular basis. As you know, I've always been an advocate of you writing more, and I feel certain that as you do more of it, you'll WANT to do more of it - both here and elsewhere. But blogging isn't video gaming; your blogging has nothing to do with the technology being used - and everything to do with the COMMUNITY in which you're doing it. There's no community between 'gamers,' sitting there immobile in total silence and often total darkness, clicking away. They don't unlimber after a marathon session and say 'boy, that was some quality time we just spent together!'
And what other interest in your life has suddenly taken on new life and new strength since you've begun writing? Not 'Sims' but READING. Coincidence? I think not!
Your brain is anything but off during Final Fantasy. To be blunt, it's chess with animals that want to kill you.
Do video gamers even work? Has anyone seen the South Park episode 'Make Love, Not Warcraft'? To paraphrase Steve, it's the funniest 22 minutes television has ever produced. The interesting thing is that the folks of Warcraft helped the folks at South Park with the animation. Apparently, they loved the episode which rips on incessant gaming (Aren't 99% of Warcraft players incessant gamers?).
Good points all, Steve. But what about video game players like me who don't spend all day every day playing? I play a few hours today, a few hours next Thursday, a few more on the weekend? Why does it have to be all or nothing?
I don't know about linking it to writing this blog, but it's certainly true that I have been devouring books. All day while I'm at work, I can think of nothing but coming home to read. You may say some of the books are garbage (and I'll agree) but it's just kindling on the fire.
What about gamers that link up with other gamers via the Internet? A lot of games now are multiplayer. Doesn't that count as community?
Finishing the first Zelda gave me a great sense of accomplishment. Finishing the first Super Mario Brothers? Not quite as much. I came close to finishing Super Marios 2, but then made the mistake of lending it to a friend for a weekend. He solved it and sadly, in my bitterness, I never played it again. I think that was the moment when video games lost their meaning for me. How different would my life have been if I had just solved Super Marios 2 FIRST? It was back to watching MTV and fantasizing about Belinda Carlisle for me.
A community of 300 pound dorks with skin problems is still a community.
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