Grand Theft Auto

Steven Johnson is the author of Everything Bad is Good For You: How Today's Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter (the link is to a review by science fiction writer, Cory Doctorow at boingboing)

He has written an open letter to Senator Hillary Clinton, who has called for a $90-million study on the effects of video games on children:

The great secret of today's video games that has been lost in the moral panic over "Grand Theft Auto" is how difficult the games have become. That difficulty is not merely a question of hand-eye coordination; most of today's games force kids to learn complex rule systems, master challenging new interfaces, follow dozens of shifting variables in real time and prioritize between multiple objectives.