stevenberlinjohnson.com: Reviewing The Reviewers: Part 37

I'm writing this from the very last leg of my tour, which turns out to be a small seminar with ten Italian grad students on the isle of Capri, of all places. (I'm literally gazing out over the bay of Naples as I type.) So for all of you who pitied my exhausting tour schedule, you can hold off on the pity for now. For the first time in a month, I'm actually feeling genuinely relaxed.

While waiting for my flight from Heathrow I managed to catch John Derbyshire's essay/review of Everything Bad from The National Review. His piece turns out to be one of my favorite responses thus far, partially because it comes from someone I would have expected to be less sympathetic to the book's argument, and partially because he himself thought he was less sympathetic until he actually sat down to read the book.

If Johnson is right –– as I suspect he is –– our kids, under the stimulating pressure of ever shorter technology cycles, are going to go steaming past us in cognitive abilities, leaving us choking on their dust. Teenagers have, of course, always regarded their parents' painfully accumulated lifetime's wisdom as being irrelevant, our cherished beliefs antiquated, our fondest memories as remote as the Bronze Age. Now this contempt must be getting deeper, and it must be setting in at an earlier age.

A little less pleasant to read was Janet Maslin's review in the Times yesterday. Before we get to the substance of her critique, I should mention a strange pattern that seems to be developing with the Times daily reviewers. When my first book, Interface Culture, came out, it was ignored by the reviewers; a few years later when Emergence arrived, Michiko Kakutani gave it a mixed review, and said in passing that it wasn't nearly as good as my previous book. Then the daily Times reviewers chose not to review Mind Wide Open; and now Maslin gives Everything Bad a decidedly mixed review, and says in passing that it isn't nearly as good as my previous book.

Memo to Times book critics: if you're only going to review every other book -- which is fine, I'm honored to be reviewed at all -- could you perhaps choose to review the ones you actually like?

Now here's the part that I find strange in Maslin's critique:

The reader rattles around within the book's narrow universe and repeatedly bumps into the same thing: reiterations of Mr. Johnson's one big idea. Yes, X (fill in the name of a video game, reality television show or intricately plotted series like "24") may appear to be (pick one: mindless, stupid or violent). But X actually inculcates important survival skills. X shows how to test ideas, figure out which ones work and grasp the full sequence of steps that must be taken to achieve a certain goal. X makes you mentally alert, even if you appear to be slack-jawed and glassy-eyed. X makes you smarter.

Now, it true that I do have a number of analyses that attempt to show that X work of pop culture is actually more challenging than it's conventionally believed to be. The reason I did that is because the premise of pop culture being more challenging than it's conventionally believed to be is, um, THE WHOLE ARGUMENT OF THE BOOK. You could argue, I suppose, that there's nothing controversial about the thesis, and thus we don't need my various close readings to prove it, but I think it's pretty clear -- if you do a Google search on the title and sift through the insane volume of responses over the past few weeks -- that the complexity of pop culture was hardly a given before the book came out.

So if pop culture's complexity was not a given, then isn't it reasonable to grant me some room to make the case? Besides, I only spend about half the book actually walking through the examples -- the length of two longish New Yorker essays. Would Maslin have been happier if I had just done one close reading of TV show, and left it at that? I was actually worried that people would criticize the book for not being comprehensive enough, but I wanted it to be a quick read and so I tried to limit the examples to the major genres.

I do think she has a point in her skepticism about the reality TV section. This is one of the things that has been the most difficult about the interviews on the tour: because reality TV is so controversial, and because some of the publicity materials for the book talk up this angle, I've had more than my fair share of interviews that start by introducing me as the guy who thinks "Extreme Makeover" boosts your IQ.

The responsibility for this ultimately rests on my shoulders. If you look at the reality TV section, my argument involves three points: first, most reality TV is pretty mediocre. Second, since I'm talking about a trend in the culture, the question is: how does it stack up against the mediocre programming of the late seventies. That's where I say that I'd take "Survivor" any day over "The Price Is Right" or "Fantasy Island." That's not to imply by any means that "Survivor" is improving your mind, just to say that the quality of the TV programming is improving over time.

Looking back on it, I probably would have been better off if I'd just left it at that. But I felt -- and continue to feel -- that most critics don't get what makes reality programming so interesting to people, and indeed what makes it more interesting than "Fantasy Island." And so I wrote a few pages about the emotional intelligence that we use as viewers when we engage in these shows -- tracking the shifting psychological gameplay of the participants, and so on.

Now, if you go back and read the section carefully, I think it's still pretty clear that I think reality TV is not terribly nourishing, compared to the other examples I give. But I do think I could have flagged my misgivings a little more clearly. When you write a book about pop culture making us smarter and include a defense of reality programming, you have to assume that people will put the two together, and hear the message as: reality programming makes us smart!

The Basics

I'm a father of three boys, husband of one wife, and author of seven books, and co-founder of three web sites. We spend most of the year in Marin County, California though I'm on the road a lot giving talks. (You can see the full story here.) Personal correspondence should go to sbeej at earthlink dot net. Media requests should go to Matthew.Venzon at us.penguingroup dot com. If you're interested in having me speak at an event, drop a line to Wesley Neff at the Leigh Bureau (WesN at Leighbureau dot com.)

My Books

Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation
An exploration of environments that lead to breakthrough innovation, in science, technology, business, and the arts. I conceived it as the closing book in a trilogy on innovative thinking, after Ghost Map and Invention. But in a way, it completes an investigation that runs through all the books. Sold more copies in hardcover than anything else I've written.
The Invention of Air
The story of the British radical chemist Joseph Priestley, who ended up having a Zelig-like role in the American Revolution. My version of a founding fathers book, and a reminder that most of the Enlightenment was driven by open source ideals.
The Ghost Map
The latest: the story of a terrifying outbreak of cholera in 1854 London 1854 that ended up changing the world. An idea book wrapped around a page-turner. I like to think of it as a sequel to Emergence if Emergence had been a disease thriller. You can see a trailer for the book here.
Everything Bad Is Good for You: How Today's Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter
The title says it all. This one sparked a slightly insane international conversation about the state of pop culture -- and particularly games. There were more than a few dissenters, but the response was more positive than I had expected. And it got me on The Daily Show, which made it all worthwhile.
Mind Wide Open : Your Brain and the Neuroscience of Everyday Life
My first best-seller, and the only book I've written in which I appear as a recurring character, subjecting myself to a battery of humiliating brain scans. The last chapter on Freud and the neuroscientific model of the mind is one of my personal favorites.
Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software
The story of bottom-up intelligence, from slime mold to Slashdot. Probably the most critically well-received all my books, and the one that has influenced the most eclectic mix of fields: political campaigns, web business models, urban planning, the war on terror.
Interface Culture : How New Technology Transforms the Way We Create and Communicate
My first. The book I wrote instead of finishing my dissertation. Still in print almost a decade later, and still relevant, I think. But I haven't read it in a while, so who knows what's in there!

Comments

Steve, thanks for your visit in Naples and for your brilliant seminar.
A photo is here:
http://max-web.blogspot.com/2005/05/interfacce-abbronzate.html
and from this you can get the rest on Flickr

Posted by: Enrico Rebeggiani | May 27, 2005 at 01:29 AM

Good Lord, what are you doing hunched over a keyboard in such a setting?

Posted by: Jerry | May 27, 2005 at 07:06 AM

I liked Maslin's review, but I think the problem is that the subtitle of your book -- how can you demonstrate that all of this is making us smarter? As she says, there is too much hyperbole. You have a similar problem with Maclom Gladwell's _Blink_ -- where is the data to support the claims that you as an author are making, not the ancedotes from studies with more limited claims?

Re the NYT Magazine excerpt, I stopped watching the "West Wing" _because_ of the artifice of withholding information. How does that device make a smarter? The viewer has no way of inferring the missing piece, which would be a form of thinking. Instead, the show ceases to be a drama -- who do characters act in such a situation -- and becomes a faux mystery (most of the characters know what is going on, but the viewer does not, and there is no way the viewer can figure it out). This was the absurd device behind _The Pelican Brief_ -- everyone knew what was in the brief but the reader. The mystery was external to the drama. I fail to see how any of this makes the viewer smarter.

The "social complexity" of the story arcs can only make us smarter _if_ viewers actually cogitate on those arcs. Indeed, the complexity may create an unease that strikes viewers as edgy rather than reflect greater cogitation. '24' viewers aren't smarter for watching it; they are dislocated by the complexity and feel 'thrilled.' But that reveals a weakness in the drama, not a strength. Contrast this with the much simpler _The X-Files_ . The show was at its best in early episodes in which there was some ambiguity even at the end over whether a phenomena was supernatural or natural. This uneasy resolution created a thriller-like effect. It was inherent in the drama, however, not an side-effect of the overloaded plot.

The _Apprentice_ example of the last round "wrench" showing the smarts of the show is illogical. If the contestants did not know they would have to keep friends while advancing, then there is no strategy, simply happenstance, for the ones that kept friends.

Who sentimentalizes the past of TV? Some might, but most critics of TV deplore the fact that networks are promoting cheaper reality-TV over more dramatic fare like ER, West Wing, 24, and Homicide (one of the greats) or comedies like Seinfeld, Frasier, and Will & Grace. It is the movement away from the 1990s, not the 1970s or 80s that angers critics. Movie stars went to television in greater numbers in the 1990s because the writing was better and characters is good shows would evolve over seasons.

Posted by: CHristopher ball | May 31, 2005 at 01:04 AM

Actually, the likelihood that the "name" reviewer has read your "previous" book is slim to none. They are most likely relying on a prep sheet prepared by an assistant. And, as you can see, the likelihood that the name reviewer has read your book with any real attention and thoroughness is slim to some.

Don't believe everything you read in the newspaper, especially if it concerns you.

Posted by: Gerard Van der Leun | June 01, 2005 at 10:28 AM

This is all new to me, unbelievable as it may seem. What is new to me today(thanks to the UK Sunday Observer) is Steven Johnson and all the books, and blogging as a pastime. What is great is the ability to read an authors response to the critics. Many of these are inclined to make cheap points about minor inaccuracies ( as they see it) and it is interesting to see a subsequent defense.

Posted by: Ken Hook | June 05, 2005 at 10:34 AM