susan greenfield

8 February 2006

Tomorrow's People

Introducing Baroness Susan Greenfield as the 2006 Visiting Professor for BSMS, Professor Jon Cohen quoted from her book. ‘We are standing on the brink of a mind makeover more cataclysmic than any in our history.’

Arguing that we cannot leave it to the scientist to be the conscience of the nation, Baroness Greenfield raised many questions centred around our individuality, which she described as the most precious thing we possess.

'If you dissect a brain and get a bit under your fingernail, would it be a memory? The bit that makes you love?'

Reality

With voice interface computer software already in existence, and sensors being developed that could, for example, be placed in a toilet to check urine for diabetes, she considered the possibility of augmented reality taking over: a permanent state of Google. Sightseers could wear glasses showing them the history of the location, while surgeons could view labels on the body parts they are working on.

With recent robot dogs, children soon wish they had a real dog instead. But a new model, which can interact properly and show emotion, was often considered preferable to having a real best friend – a true merger between reality and cyberworld.

Bodies

With cochlear implants in use, and the development of retinal ones, it might be possible to gain extra hearing or sight powers. Human-machine convergence could continue via cells, which generate small voltages and could be used as electronic components, or neurochips.

As a paralysed patient with a brain implant can already ‘will’ a cursor to move on screen, the distinction between mental and physical is being eroded. Perhaps the converse could be true, and thought could influence our bodies? Could, for example, the placebo effect be harnessed?

Work

As shown in trades unions debates, we prefer higher living standards to doing less work. Even if a robot does our hoovering, we will still need work to define ourselves and measure our achievements. However, work and home life are likely to merge.

Incidentally, dementia is not a natural consequence of old age – brain stimulation can help, and working longer can therefore be positive.

Reproduction

After a 10 second crash course in neuroscience, Baroness Greenfield convinced us that designer babies were unlikely, as genes are only indirectly linked with brain function. However artificial wombs could one day give men and older women the chance of pregnancy. Would this mean the end of the traditional life narrative?

Education

It is experience, not inherent differences between people, that affects the networks created between brain cells. Rats in an enriched environment grow more of these connections, and taxi drivers, with maps to memorise, develop larger hippocampuses. (With Alzheimer’s, these connections are lost, and the sufferer is thrown back into the confusion of early childhood.)

If a child is left to assemble disordered impressions from a game or tv screen, rather than being led through a coherent narrative by an author, they are likely to end up with scattered unconnected facts, like a pub quiz, rather than a conceptual framework of neural connections. With all the new technological influences on children, current generations must therefore decide what children should learn, bearing in mind that education won’t take place in a classroom for long.

What next?

In the future, we could turn into passive recipients of technology. We might seek to lose our individuality in a collective, or actively seek it through consumerism. But Baroness Greenfield suggests that the ‘Eureka moment’, when we make our own new thought connections, could be the perfect expression of our individuality.

Baroness Greenfield is Director of the Royal Institution of Great Britain and the Institute of the Future of the Mind. She has been awarded 28 honorary degrees, and has won the Michael Faraday medal, the Golden Plate Award and the L’Ordre National de la Légion d’Honneur.