We are joined today by Susan Greenfield. Baroness Greenfield is a neuroscientist, writer, broadcaster and member of the House of Lords. Her research has focused on brain physiology, especially on the brain mechanisms of Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s diseases. She’s also become well known as a populariser of science and has written many books including ‘Journey to the Centres of the Mind’, ‘The Private Life of the Brain’ ‘Inside the Body’ and ‘ You and Me: The Neuroscience of Identity’. She’s recently become interested in the potential impact digital technologies can have on the mind culminating in her latest book ‘Mind Change’ and this will be the topic of our discussion today.
MWS Podcast 70: Susan Greenfield as audio only:
Download audio: MWS_Podcast_70_Susan_Greenfield
Probably qualifies as Barry’s briskest interlocutor! She could probably do with some mindfulness training to help her slow down a bit and stop jumping the gun on questions.
However, very interesting material. It made me reflect that the value of digital technologies to me (which is very great) is probably less double-edged than it is for the millennial ‘digital natives’. I grew up without it, reading books, and had my brain shaped initially by other things, without the constant dangers it creates. That means that digital technologies seem much more of an opportunity and a resource than a danger to me – but that won’t be the case for everyone.
Awareness of the effects of this – and everything else we do – on our brains has to be a major part of the response. That needs to be made a basic part of education: but nearly everything in education at present points us away from self-awareness and encourages focus on linguistic, mathematical, or other analytic skills. Even IT consists in learning how to use computers according to the purposes we already have, rather than reflecting on those purposes. When will IT teachers have modules in the psychology of IT use included in their programmes? Classics, I fear, could only ever be a very small part of the answer: a much more rounded approach to educating whole individuals towards integration is needed in order to engage effectively with issues like these.