Last month's column described the cognitive systems that process our interactions with natural and electronic environments. Some recent provocative research rejects the conventional wisdom that extensive interactions with electronic media provoke culturally inappropriate behavior and reduce problem-solving abilities — dumb down society, as it were. This month's column will thus focus on Steven Johnson's analysis of this issue in his thoughtprovoking book Everything Bad Is Good For You: How Today's Popular Culture Is Actually Making You Smarter (2005). He focuses principally of the effects of video games, TV, film, and the Internet.

Johnson suggests that the principal criticisms of these media focus on their content rather than on the cognitive demands they make on the players/viewers. Further, many of the critics have little first-hand knowledge about the current nature of the formats they criticize, and overestimate the amount of violent and sexual content.

Popular culture is not high culture, and so it shouldn't be compared to it. Folks typically don't play video games or watch popular TV programs to broaden their intellectual horizons. Those who golf, fish, solve crossword puzzles, or play cards similarly don't do it to materially enhance their intellect. What all such activities have in common is that they increase knowledge and/or problem-solving abilities within specific parameters of interest to the players.

Last month's column suggested that our brain's defining property is to plan, regulate, and predict movement. Book reading, an activity that electronic media critics consider more intellectually stimulating than video games, is basically the passive observation of someone else's thought processes. The reader tries to predict what will occur, but has no control over the narrative flow (and this is also the case with those who observe TV shows and films).