Week One Discussion 2
“Why Games are Good for You”
by Steven Johnson
Quote #1: "So it is with games. It's not what you are thinking about when you're
playing a game, it's the way you're thinking that matters" (493).
I found this logic a little dubious. Surely what you are thinking about when
playing a game matters. For example, what about reductionist types of thinking in a
game like sexist, racist, or homophobic sentiment? Isn't what you are thinking and how
you are thinking linked? I feel like his separation between these two terms is
problematic.
Quote #2: "But almost all the standards we use to measure reading's cognitive
benefits--attention, memory, following threads, and so on--the nonliterary
popular culture has been steadily growing more challenging over the past thirty
years."
When I read this quote, I noticed that Johnson focuses mainly on "cognitive
benefits." But what about content? I agree that video games may require more cognitive
skills, but this eschews the idea that what we learn is important. Do, for example,
children get a sense of literary technique, writing style, or character building? It would
be hard to argue that video games can convey the complexities and nuance of great
literature.
Quote #3: "The question is why kids are so eager to soak up that much
information when it is delivered to them in game form."
I felt that this statement held an assumption with which I disagree. Johnson
assumes the goal of education is to "soak up [...] information" and the easier this is done
the better. The benefits of reading are exactly because it is a more difficult task, one that
draws more attention to how knowledge is created and less toward receiving it
unquestioned. In his example about Sim City the child learns that lowering industrial
taxes helps spur business, but this is a model built to stress one particular ideological
truth, that growth and industry are de facto public goods. If we were to look through
another lens, say environmental, or religious, then the choice becomes clouded.