Thursday, May 12, 2005
Video Games Are Good For You
Posted by Bruce Barry on Thu, May 12, 2005 at 9:47 AM
Or so one gathers from Malcolm Gladwell's review essay in The New Yorker this week on Steven Johnson's new book Everything Bad Is Good for You. A snippet from Gladwell:
Johnson has been reacting to reviews on his own blog.
Books and video games represent two very different kinds of learning. When you read a biology textbook, the content of what you read is what matters. Reading is a form of explicit learning. When you play a video game, the value is in how it makes you think. Video games are an example of collateral learning, which is no less important. Being "smart" involves facility in both kinds of thinking—the kind of fluid problem solving that matters in things like video games and I.Q. tests, but also the kind of crystallized knowledge that comes from explicit learning.
Johnson has been reacting to reviews on his own blog.
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