Everything Bad Is Good for You
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Narrated by:
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Jason Culp
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By:
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Steven Johnson
About this listen
From the author of the New York Times bestseller Mind Wide Open comes a groundbreaking assessment of popular culture as it's never been considered before: through the lens of intelligence.
Forget everything you’ve ever read about the age of dumbed-down, instant-gratification culture. In this provocative, unfailingly intelligent, thoroughly researched, and surprisingly convincing book, Steven Johnson draws from fields as diverse as neuroscience, economics, and media theory to argue that the pop culture we soak in every day - from Lord of the Rings to Grand Theft Auto to The Simpsons - has been growing more sophisticated with each passing year, and, far from rotting our brains, is actually posing new cognitive challenges that are actually making our minds measurably sharper. You will never regard the glow of the video game or television screen the same way again.
©2006 Steven Johnson (P)2006 Penguin AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
"Persuasive...The old dogs won’t be able to rest as easily once they’ve read Everything Bad is Good for You, Steven Johnson’s elegant polemic.... It’s almost impossible not to agree with him. (Walter Kirn, The New York Times Book Review)
"A thought-provoking argument that today's allegedly vacuous media are, well, thought provoking...A brisk, witty read, well versed in the history of literature and bolstered with research...Johnson, it turns out, still knows the value of reading a book. And this one is indispensable." (Time)
"There is a pleasing eclecticism to [Johnson’s] thinking. He is as happy analyzing Finding Nemo as he is dissecting the intricacies of a piece of software ... Johnson wants to understand popular culture…in the very practical sense of wondering what watching something like The Dukes of Hazzard does to the way our minds work." (Malcolm Gladwell, The New Yorker)
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What do Apple CEO Steve Jobs, comedian Chris Rock, prize-winning architect Frank Gehry, the story developers at Pixar films, and the Army Chief of Strategic Plans all have in common? Best-selling author Peter Sims found that all of them have achieved breakthrough results by methodically taking small, experimental steps in order to discover and develop new ideas.
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Useful approach, not for everyone
- By Tad Davis on 08-15-11
By: Peter Sims
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The Shallows
- What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains
- By: Nicholas Carr
- Narrated by: Richard Powers
- Length: 10 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Weaving insights from philosophy, neuroscience, and history into a rich narrative, The Shallows explains how the internet is rerouting our neural pathways, replacing the subtle mind of the book reader with the distracted mind of the screen watcher. A gripping story of human transformation played out against a backdrop of technological upheaval, The Shallows will forever alter the way we think about media and our minds.
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It is not consistant, so it is frustrating.
- By Adam Shields on 08-03-12
By: Nicholas Carr
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The Nineties
- A Book
- By: Chuck Klosterman
- Narrated by: Chuck Klosterman, Dion Graham
- Length: 12 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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It was long ago, but not as long as it seems: The Berlin Wall fell and the Twin Towers collapsed. In between, one presidential election was allegedly decided by Ross Perot while another was plausibly decided by Ralph Nader. Landlines fell to cell phones, the internet exploded, and pop culture accelerated without the aid of technology that remembered everything. It was the last era with a real mainstream to either identify with or oppose. The ’90s brought about a revolution in the human condition, and a shift in consciousness, that we’re still struggling to understand.
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A Very White Middle-class Take On The Nineties
- By Umar Lee on 02-10-22
By: Chuck Klosterman
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Outnumbered
- Exploring the Algorithms That Control Our Lives
- By: David Sumpter
- Narrated by: David West
- Length: 8 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Our increasing reliance on technology and the Internet has opened a window for mathematicians and data researchers to gaze through into our lives. Using the data they are constantly collecting about where we travel, where we shop, what we buy, what interests us, they can begin to predict our daily habits, and increasingly we are relinquishing our decision making to algorithms - are we giving up this up too easily?
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A good reality check for "Cambridge Hyperbolitica"
- By Haggai Elkayam on 08-06-18
By: David Sumpter
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The Click Moment
- Seizing Opportunity in an Unpredictable World
- By: Frans Johansson
- Narrated by: Erik Synnestvedt
- Length: 7 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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On the one hand we aren’t surprised by the uncertainty of everyday life, but on the other we believe that success can be analyzed and planned for. It is a revealing paradox. The implications are explosive and they obliterate every common-sense notion we have about strategy and planning. The Click Moment is about two very simple but highly provocative ideas.
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Outstanding book!
- By Anilyn Karel on 08-26-24
By: Frans Johansson
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Too Big To Know
- Rethinking Knowledge Now That the Facts Aren't the Facts, Experts Are Everywhere, and the Smartest Person in the Room Is the Room
- By: David Weinberger
- Narrated by: Peter Johnson
- Length: 8 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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We used to know how to know. We got our answers from books or experts. We'd nail down the facts and move on. But in the Internet age, knowledge has moved onto networks. There's more knowledge than ever, of course, but it's different. Topics have no boundaries, and nobody agrees on anything.Yet this is the greatest time in history to be a knowledge seeker - if you know how.
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Good to know ...
- By John B. Fisher on 01-24-12
By: David Weinberger
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Whiplash
- How to Survive Our Faster Future
- By: Joi Ito, Jeff Howe
- Narrated by: James Foster
- Length: 7 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Today, not only is everything digital getting faster, cheaper, and smaller at an exponential rate, we also have the Internet. When these two revolutions - one in technology and the other in communications - joined, an explosive force was unleashed that changed the very nature of innovation. And with any change, we have seen many strategic blunders and extraordinary learning curves along the way.
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Just general advice on how to survive
- By A. Yoshida on 09-01-17
By: Joi Ito, and others
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Questions Are the Answer
- A Breakthrough Approach to Your Most Vexing Problems at Work and in Life
- By: Hal Gregersen
- Narrated by: Rick Adamson
- Length: 8 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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For innovation and leadership guru Hal Gregersen, the power of questions has always been clear - but it took some years for the follow-on question to hit him: If so much depends on fresh questions, shouldn’t we know more about how to arrive at them? That sent him on a research quest ultimately including more than 200 interviews with creative thinkers. Questions Are the Answer delivers the insights Gregersen gained about the conditions that give rise to catalytic questions - and breakthrough insights - and how anyone can create them.
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All you need is the title
- By Bob Jordy on 01-13-22
By: Hal Gregersen
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The Immortal Game
- A History of Chess
- By: David Shenk
- Narrated by: John H. Mayer
- Length: 8 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Why has one game, alone among the thousands of games invented and played throughout human history, not only survived but thrived within every culture it has touched? What is it about its 32 figurative pieces, moving about its 64 black and white squares according to very simple rules, that has captivated people for nearly 1,500 years? Why has it driven some of its greatest players into paranoia and madness, and yet is hailed as a remarkably powerful intellectual tool?
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Buy in print
- By Ivy Reisner on 08-30-11
By: David Shenk
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Group Genius
- The Creative Power of Collaboration
- By: Keith Sawyer
- Narrated by: Jonathan Marosz
- Length: 8 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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In this authoritative and fascinating new audiobook, Keith Sawyer, a psychologist at Washington University, tears down some of the most popular myths about creativity and erects new principles in their place. He reveals that creativity is always collaborative: even when you're alone. Sawyer's audiobook is filled with compelling stories about the inventions that changed our world.
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Worth reading
- By Glenn on 12-29-10
By: Keith Sawyer
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Future Shock
- By: Alvin Toffler
- Narrated by: Peter Berkrot
- Length: 16 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Future Shock is about the present. Future Shock is about what is happening today to people and groups who are overwhelmed by change. Change affects our products, communities, organizations - even our patterns of friendship and love. Future Shock vividly describes the emerging global civilization: tomorrow's family life, the rise of new businesses, subcultures, lifestyles, and human relationships - all of them temporary. It illuminates the world of tomorrow by exploding countless cliches about today.
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So Accurate
- By Peter Gracia on 03-31-19
By: Alvin Toffler
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Brilliantly exploring today's cutting edge brain research, Mind Wide Open allows readers to understand themselves and the people in their lives as never before. Using a mix of experiential reportage, personal storytelling, and fresh scientific discovery, Steven Johnson describes how the brain works and how its systems connect to the day-to-day realities of individual lives.
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Good scientific history
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Thought provoking
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This is a thrilling historical account of the worst cholera outbreak in Victorian London and a brilliant exploration of how Dr. John Snow's solution revolutionized the way we think about disease, cities, science, and the modern world.
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What listeners say about Everything Bad Is Good for You
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- liz
- 11-28-16
Skips sections
Periodically the audio book will skip over a sentence in the book. It also skipped four pages (109-113 depending on your book copy)
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- Paul
- 05-22-21
compelling
interesting read with compelling arguments that were easy to read (or listen to) with an underpinning of hard science.
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- Jasson
- 05-18-15
Smart people… it must be TV and video games!
Would you recommend Everything Bad Is Good for You to your friends? Why or why not?
No. It's references are dated.
Was Everything Bad Is Good for You worth the listening time?
Not worth the time. It's an interesting idea and I'm sure parts of it are true however he provides little proof to support his theory. The book is full of "I think" and "I suspect" without backing up his assumptions.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Kico M
- 01-20-20
Insisghtful
It is a very interesting and insightful book. Johnson is able to link good cases with his hypostases of the evolution of the mind. In addition, as a father, is a relief to know that video games and TV might be good for kids.
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- Anonymous User
- 01-15-18
great material, but outdated.
If you are truly interested in the topics of this book, there are many more modern adaptations of the idea that have taken this research further.
It was a great book, and I believe the author was ahead of the curve at the time, but when he is talking about technology, we are leaps and bounds ahead of where he mentions in the book.
Although it is somewhat comforting to validate the information.
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3 people found this helpful
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- Citizen
- 04-27-16
a good cultural commentary, a little redundant
Maybe it's because he's preaching to the choir in my case, but there were sections of this book that seemed a bit obvious and superfluous to his thesis. That said, there is plenty in this book that I would want everyone to read. The fashionable self deprecation in our culture should stop and this book gives good reasons why it should stop.
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- Pekka
- 11-05-12
Interesting, a little spread out
Interesting, fun and varied.
[Audible: I would rather use the guided review form, but if you then ask me to give three describing words, try first removing the minimum limit of 15 words, okay?]
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1 person found this helpful
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- stacey nelson
- 03-17-18
nice to hear "the rest of the story"
I like how Johnson doesn't make bold claims just solid claims that can be backed up with his research.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Jay Quintana
- 03-29-15
Wanted to love this, but, not convinced.
Would you try another book from Steven Johnson and/or Jason Culp?
Yes to both. Johnson writes well and Culp's narration breezes along. It was an easy listen. Alas, I just wasn't convinced of the author's claims that watching TV and playing video games has made us smarter. In fact, I'm not convinced that the people who say these things dumb us down are wrong. Believe me, as someone who's watched and played more than my share of TV and video games, I would like nothing more than to agree with the author.
Did Everything Bad Is Good for You inspire you to do anything?
Frankly, it made me think of watching less TV and playing fewer video games.
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- Sean
- 12-07-15
Wish he had more to say.
Great content. The author's points need to be heard. I only wish he would bring up more than just games and TV, or at least he could have delve deeper. He could have talked more about the change in crime rates, the similarities to work life, and more about user-created content.
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