What is Learning?

Steven Johnson defies many critics in his book, Everything Bad Is Good For You, by submitting the idea that today’s media is making us a smarter generation (Johnson 4). Johnson coins the term the Sleeper Curve, meaning just that. Johnson argues media, such as video games, television, film, and the Internet; build our cognitive skills as we interact with them (Johnson 7-10). He does acknowledge the other skills we acquire from reading, however does not delve into them. Readers must keep in mind that, even though, Johnson’s book is based on media making us more intelligent (Johnson 4), these are not the only things challenging our intellect. Dana Stevens, a writer for Slate, an Internet blog, says, “As long as Johnson defines intelligence strictly in quantitative cog-sci terms ("attention, patience, retention, the parsing of narrative threads," etc.), his case may seem solid…but does that make us any smarter? (Stevens) She criticize Johnson in her writing by making the assumption that Johnson’s argument is seemingly solely based on the ideas he presents, are impacting how we think. I’ve only read, Everything Bad is Good For You, by Steven Johnson, but it sounds like he is pretty intelligent, he knows that these characteristics alone will not make us a smarter generation, however, over the past decades media has presented its viewers with more complexity then ever (Johnson 17), and in return giving our brain a work out. For me, Johnson has brought new ideas to the table, about how we interact with media in today’s culture. After bringing his ideas into media one can see that, Johnson’s idea do appear in different types of media.