September 21, 2005

Steven Johnson

Steven Johnson, author of "Everything Bad is Good For You," came to speak to us today about his new book. His basic argument is that television and video games today are so complex that they are actually teaching the youth (and older) of the country some useful skills.

He likens the process used in an RPG to solve a level (cross river; to cross river, get a boat; to get a boat, visit the villagers; etc.) to the scientific process of experimentation, hypothesis-generation, and renewed experimentation.

He also showed us a graph that displayed all the plotlines of a television show from the 70s (Starsky and Hutch) and compared it to a graph of all of the plots from a Sopranos show. In addition, he explained how the plots in a typical Sopranos show reference events that happened in previous shows, even in previous seasons.

Johnson also showed a graph with the inter-relationships between characters on a Dallas episode and a Seinfeld episode. The number of characters you are expected to remember (and their relationships) is two or three times that of Dallas.

Posted September 21, 2005 12:50 AM. Categories: Week 3 | Permalink