Read (skimmed) Everything Bad is Good for You over the weekend. It’s a book by Steven Johnson and the premise is that lots of the things from pop culture have a lot of value – video games, TV shows, etc…. In the library world, for example, there’s been a lot of talk lately about the value of video and computer games. Libraries are hosting gaming tournaments and removing computer game bans on their public access computers. Research is showing that playing games builds numerous skills.

In the TV chapters, Johnson cites Hill Street Blues as a ground-breaking TV show. When it was first aired, people were blown away by how sophisticated it was… by the complexity of the plot, etc…. He said that if we now watch Hill Street Blues, it seems really simplistic. We’ve had 20 years of TV viewing since then and have grown to expect increased layers and dimensions. He specifically mentions a current TV show called 24, which I have not yet watched. Johnson also talks about the Simpsons and how each episode is filled with “inside jokes” of a sort – references to other pop culture things – and how a bit part of the show’s appeal is our enjoyment in making the connections and “getting the joke”.

Throughout the book, he refers to a scene from the Woody Allen movie, Sleeper, in which scientists in the future are scoffing at people from our time, because we didn’t realize that deep fat, cream pies, and hot fudge are all good for us. For some reason, this is the thing that is most on my brain after I read the book. Nutrition. I think about the changes I have experienced in my nutritional thinking in my own lifespan — nuts? bad! no good! eggs? bad! no good! cheese? good! no bad! no good! It’s hard to know what to eat! I see my sister struggle with this as she makes nutritional choices for my one-year old nephew. Cow’s milk? Bad? Necessary? Immunizations? Bad? Necessary? What are you going to do?

What else do we currently think is bad that ten or twenty or fifty years from now we will actually discover is good for us?