I thoroughly enjoyed Steven Berlin Johnson’s latest book, Everything Bad is Good for You: How today’s popular culture is actually making us smarter. It was a fast read (about a day and a half), but mostly because I was motivated. The basic premise is that popular culture, such as TV and video games, have drastically increased in complexity and as a result have helped us sharpen our brains. IQ scores have steadily increased which offers some support for the theory.
Johnson also includes several comparisons of media from yesteryear and today that show support for massive increases in complexity. A single episode of 24 is a byzantine mash of relationships that would give a healthy novel a run for its money.
The idea that mastering a video game like Grand Theft Auto can foster intellectual acumen isn’t terribly popular, but extremly interesting. Johnson notes that there are several types of intelligence, so say having increased exploration skills from video games won’t help you write a better paper. It will help you program your TV though, which is a skill that even many snobby english majors can’t perfrom.
Another point I enjoyed was that as a whole we are reading novels less, we are writing more. With the advent of email, IM and bulletin boards, the average person has many more options when it comes to writing. Being able to hold three IM sessions at the same time is a whole other matter, and surely a type of skill that previous generations lacked.
If you haven’t already, go buy this book. I have a feeling older readers will be more likely to object to the book’s main point ("I don’t care what he says, pop culture is taking us to hell!"), but it’s worth a read.
Next up on the reading is is either Freakonomics or The Selfish Gene. It’s a tossup.
What’s the logic behind not being able to open a file that is in the trash (in the Mac OS)? It hasn’t actually moved. If the OS wanted to, it could open the file. Despite this rule that has existed for as long as I remember, I still try to open items in the trash that couldn’t be deleted because they were "in use" (usually a screen grab or something that I sent via iChat and really isn’t currently in use).
Annoying.
I upgraded my laptop to Tiger today and found Safari to be my default browser and Mail to be my default email client. That’s a low blow Apple, if I want to use your software I’ll use it, don’t force me to. I still don’t know why the default browser/mail setting is located in Safari/Mail. Oh well, easily fixed.
The fine folks at 37 Signals are taking the wraps off their second web application today, Backpack (the first was Basecamp). I have been using it for the past few days and have signed up for the $5/month plan. If I had to describe it to someone who knows enough about the web to be dangerous, I would describe Backpack as a blog crossed with a wiki. To everyone else it’s simply an organization tool.
Why is Backpack better than a paper notepad or application on your computer? For starters you will never not be able to find it or become disorganized after a disk failure. But the sharing aspects of Backpack are what really sold it for me, especially over my use of text files. I can either make a page public or invite certain people to it. If I invite people, they have the ability to modify the page (wiki!) and everyone can track the changes via RSS.
Give it a whirl, there’s a useful free version.