Michael Bywater
Virtue & Virtuality
Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World
By Jane McGonigal
Jonathan Cape 390pp £12.99 order from our bookshop
The Internet – more specifically, the Web – is hell for authoritarians. It’s broken all the codes. There’s free assembly. There’s sex. It’s a fiery pit. No wonder commentators are divided. The Web makes you intellectually – even neuroanatomically – stuporous, argues Nicholas Carr in The Shallows (2010). Not so, rejoins Steven Johnson in Everything Bad is Good for You (2005). The moral argument pitches between poles.
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