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.