Both Steven Johnson's Everything Bad is Good for You and Thomas DeZengotita's Mediated address the idea of ​​a greater density of choices available in today's culture. For every product and business there are countless decisions to make. From food to clothing to office supplies, there are so many options to sift through. Both authors explore the theory and analysis of this growing complexity for consumers of products and media. The thesis of Everything Bad is Good for You is this: People who mock popular culture do so because so much of pop culture's topics are banal or banal. offensive. But the beneficial elements of video games and TV come not from their subject matter, but from their format, which requires players and viewers to work through complex plots and puzzles, getting "cognitive training" that teaches the same kind of skills that problem solving of mathematics and chess games impart. As Johnson points out, no one evaluates the benefits of chess based on its monotonically militaristic plot or argument. Mediated is difficult to describe. Imagine that you are the sun and that every flower on Earth is pointing towards you, every leaf on every tree is leaning towards you. This is somewhat similar to the situation that we, as 21st century Americans, face every day. Each of us is at the center of our own solar system, surrounded every day by hundreds of flattering appeals to our attention, be they television, radio, books, magazines, billboards, etc. What effect does this have? How can we, who are practically the stars of our own reality shows, compare ourselves to our grandparents, whose media contribution was only a trickle? How do kids growing up today find their way through the constant barrage of information, advertising and entertainment? Is there anything left in the world that is still real, or is "real" the best we can hope for? DeZengotita neither celebrates nor condemns our situation, but he does a great job of describing it. The second chapter of DeZengotita's Mediated is based on the idea that children spend more time in the adolescent stage of life because of the options in front of them. The learning curve is the same as it used to be, but children now have to learn much more and take longer to become knowledgeable adults. They have to choose who they want to be as adults and there are too many options to choose from in the time their parents have spent through the process..