1. Not surprisingly, I am going to defend reading, especially serious reading, against Johnson. He is correct that TV shows and video games are more complex than they used to be. (But what
about "The Prisoner?" I don't think anyone has figured out in 45 years what that show was
about.) But this is like saying that the tallest building in Peoria is now taller.

2. Sometimes I think Johnson makes my arguments for me. He argues that the content of the video games does not matter, only the structure. From these games, and the reality TV shows based on them, he argues that you learn not how to engage in sustained thinking, but how to
engage in pure strategic thinking. Life is not just strategy and this is what you miss if video games squeeze out serious reading. It seems like the only thing you really get better at by
playing video games is playing video games. These games are complicated but not complex. The fact that you need a 200-page guide to play but not any advanced education is a significant
indicator. He compares video games to mathematics, but mathematics can be applied to science and engineering and is not just a game.

3. Johnson is dismissive of reading to acquire facts, but Sarah Palin shows you what someone is
like without a fact base. She also shows you what someone is like who lacks depth, which you
can also acquire from serious reading. Other politicians often lack this also. There is a difference between reading political and social science and even biographies of John Adams and Winston
Churchill and reading "Hamlet" and "Macbeth."

4. Another place where Johnson seems to make my arguments for me is when he argues that
video game playing is like a drug that stimulates the pleasure centers of the brain. "Reward is everywhere in gameworld." Is this really the best environment to produce mature individuals? Johnson answers this himself when he argues that there is a blurring of kid and grownup culture. Adults should not be worrying about how to get their unicorns to eat more rainbow-colored mushrooms. Maybe you can learn how to strategize better if you think about feeding your unicorns, but is this necessarily such a good thing? I think those individuals who devised the speculative finanical instruments that almost collapsed the economy were good at thinking strategically--and were probably excellent video game players--but were clearly deficient in other types of thinking. From Johnson's perspective, the machiavellian deviant Richard Hatch
should be President.

5. Aristotle argued that you can have about 5 friends, because friendship implies having to spend a lot of time with and energy on your friends. In spite of what social-networking sites and Johnson imply, you cannot have 10,000 friends. I think these sites are a good symbol for what is wrong with Johnson's argument. Social-networking "friendships" squeeze out the time you should be spending on real friendships, just as video games squeeze out the time you should be
spending on learning how to perform sustained thinking.

6. Johnson is correct that technological factors have moved our economy from a mass consumption to a mass customization economy. However, this means that he is making unfair
comparisons when he compares "24" to "Gilligan's Island." He is comparing a niche show to
a mass culture show from the period when the three networks dominated mass culture. The number of viewers "24" gets would have led to the show's cancellation in the 1960s.

7. "Seinfeld" is a funny show and much more complex than "Green Acres," but it is still
in a sense trivial. I remember thinking after 9/11 that we could never watch "Seinfeld"in the
same way, because life is too serious.