THE ASPEN INSTITUTE

ASPEN IDEAS FESTIVAL 2015

MIND CHANGE: HOW DIGITAL TECHNOLOGIES ARE LEAVING THEIR

MARK ON OUR BRAINS

Kresge Building, Hines Room

Aspen, Colorado

Friday, July 3, 2015

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LIST OF PARTICIPANTS:

SUSAN GREENFIELD
Senior Research Fellow, Lincoln College,
Oxford University;
Founder, Neuro-Bio

* * * * *

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 MIND CHANGE: HOW DIGITAL TECHNOLOGIES ARE LEAVING THEIR
MARK ON OUR BRAINS

MS. JOHNSON: Good morning, everyone. I think

we're about ready to get started, if you can fill in and
find a seat.

I'm Tricia Johnson with the Aspen Institute.

And I'd like to welcome you to Mind Change: How Digital
Technologies Are -- affecting our brain -- Are Leaving
Their Mark On Our Brains.

I would like to introduce Susan Greenfield. She

comes to us all the way from Oxford, where she is a
research fellow, and founder, and CEO of Neuro-Bio, a
biotech company that's primarily focused on finding a
drug, an anti-Alzheimer's drug. And she also has a
distinction, I think, unlike anyone else at the Festival
this year who is a Baroness in the House of Lords.

And if you were lucky enough to hear her speak

yesterday, you'll know already that she isn't afraid to go
against the tide. And she promotes ideas in research that
are paradigm shifting. So I think you'll find it very
interesting to hear what she has to say today about how
technology is affecting our brains. Thank you.

(Applause)

MS. GREENFIELD: Thank you. Good morning,

everyone. And congratulations for finding the room. When
I first saw it, I thought no one would turn up because --
okay, so as you heard yesterday, we were exploring issues
relating to Alzheimer's and older people. What I'd like
to do this morning is go to the other end of the age
spectrum, if you like, and explore with you the impact of
digital technologies, which affect us all to greater or
lesser extents on our brains, on the brains of your kids,
and your grandchildren.

As well as widening the arch (phonetic) to think

what it will mean for all of us who are citizens of the
21st century. And unlike yesterday, I now have the
advantage of having visual aids. So I can share with you

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something that fascinated me when I was an undergraduate
at Oxford. And as part of the course, we had to dissect a
human brain. Has anyone ever done that? Oh, okay.

So those of you who have, you're still in a

minority. So forgive me, if I share my experiences that
you may be very familiar with already. And I do apologize
if you just had your breakfast, actually. But they wheel
in these trolleys and there is these plastics or
Tupperware tubs containing human brains. And of course
you are wearing such good gloves because they are in a
preservative, in formalin.

But I remember that like it was yesterday

dipping my hand into this tub of reeking formalin and
holding a brain in one hand, just like in this picture.
And thinking if I wasn't wearing gloves, I don't know if
the colleagues here who also dissected the human brain had
a similar thought. If I wasn't wearing gloves and a bit
of brain tissue got under my fingernail, you know, would
that be the bit that somebody loved with.

Could you have love under your fingernail?

Could you have a memory under your fingernail? Could you
have a habit like biting your fingernail under your
fingernail?

(Laughter)

And I'm sorry to do this to you so early after

breakfast, but when you think about it, we could spend the
whole time reflecting just on the brain because once your
hearts, and your lungs, and your livers are pretty
generic, only you have the mind that you have and for the
100,000 years we've stalked this planet as a species.

No one would ever again have a mind like yours,

nor have they in the past. And even if you're a clone,
that's to say an identical twin, you are still a unique
individual and it's not because of your heart, or your
lungs, or you're liver, it's because of your brain or more
specifically, your mind.

So what we are going to explore is what the

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impact is of the digital world on this extraordinary
aspect of human nature, one could say it's the whole pivot
of what makes you who you are, what makes life worth
living. And I'd like to share with you first a very
prescient quote by the writer Isaac Asimov from 50 years
ago. And it was astonishing. He wrote this in 1964,
predicting what life was going to be like in 2014.

"Even so, mankind will suffer badly from the

disease of boredom, a disease spreading more widely each
year and growing in intensity. This will have serious
mental, emotional and sociological consequences, and I
dare say that psychiatry will be by far and away the most
important medical specialty in 2014." Now it's just the
key bet. "The lucky few who can be involved in creative
work of any sort will be the true elite of mankind, for
they alone will do more than serve a machine."

So let's just see how accurate that was and

think about it, probably why everyone in this room,
(inaudible) with the notion of an elite. Surely in the
21st century, we should be enabling everyone to do more
than merely serve a machine.

But perhaps I'm jumping ahead and perhaps giving

that only two people put their hand up and we are not
here, a conference of neurologists, I think we need to
step back a little bit and look through the prism of
neuroscience to explore first of all what we mean by mind.
Okay. Any philosophers here? They never own up, ever.

(Laughter)

And then it gets to the question time and they

ask a highly technical question about some, you know, very
obscure writer and you know that they have come out. They
usually keep powder dry for this. So anyway, so if I
offend them they've only got themselves to blame for not
'fessing up that they are here. Okay.

So let's explore them a neuroscientist as

opposed to a philosopher might regard as a good way of
thinking about the mind. You may reflect and I did with
some people for lunch yesterday on what makes you

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different from a goldfish, or perhaps you don't? I hope I
don't offend anyone who is great goldfish lovers here, but
let's be brutal; goldfish don't have great personalities,
do they?

And if your kids have a goldfish and the

goldfish died, you could sneak off to the pet shop and buy
another goldfish. And when they came home they wouldn't
know any difference there. Now you couldn't do that with
pet cats or dogs and even if they wanted to, you certainly
couldn't do it with their brothers or sisters. Because as
we become more sophisticated in evolutionary terms so we
develop a much more varied repertoire of behavior, which
we would say characterizes and expresses your
individuality and guess what, if you have individual
experiences then you're going to become an individual.

Now how does this happen then with us as opposed

to the poor old goldfish who operates in a very narrow
range of behaviors, has a very restricted repertoire that
is tied in much more directly to the dictates of the
genes.

Although genes are important for us, they are

necessary, but they are not sufficient and they have only
an extraordinary indirect link to what you're thinking and
feeling on your whole mindset -- more of that in the Q&A,
if you wish.

What we want to focus on is now when you're born

and you're not a goldfish, but you're a human being, why
is it that we occupy more ecological niches than any other
species on the planet?

We don't run particularly fast, we don't see

particularly well, we're not particularly strong compared
to many animals, but we do something superlatively that
other animals do to lesser or greater extents, but we do
by far and away better than any other -- and I'm sure you
can guess what that is. We learn, we adapt to the
environment.

It is our evolutionary mandate to adapt to the

environment. So whether you're born in 5th century Athens

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or the Brazilian rainforest or downtown Aspen, or even
Oxford, you will become a person that is going to be
equipped to navigate, and adapt, and thrive ideally in
that time and in that place.

Now how does this happen? Well, this is

something called plasticity. It's a word, I know because
admirably there's been a whole theme on the mind here. I
think probably everyone is comfortable with that term now,
but just to remind you when we talk about plasticity of
the brain, we don't mean the brain is made of plastic, it
comes from the Greek "plasticos," to be molded.

So let's have a look first -- and this is going

to be, if you like, the fastest neuroscience course in the
world. It's going to last for about five slides. So I
think it's necessary nonetheless in order to clear the
ground for then asking the big question about the impact
of technologies.

So let's look first on what happens when you're

born. So this is -- forgive me the neurologists here, the
blobby bits and I'm going to use non-technical terms. The
blobby bits of brain cells and the stringy bits of
connections, okay. So here we have the newborn brain and
then very quickly you can see the first 15 months of life
and then 2 years.

You can see the astonishing feature of the human

brain postnatally is not the proliferation of the blobby
bits as to say, it is not a mere increase in brain cell
number, no. It is the connections between them, it is the
configuration and patterns of connections, I want to
persuade you that make you the unique individual that you
are.

So even if you're a clone that's to say an

identical twin, you're going to have a unique pattern of
brain cell connections. Why? Because these connections
are going to be incessantly upgraded, strengthened, and
shaped and so on in accordance with your individual
interactions with the environment.

Okay. So let's look at one example of this so-

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called plasticity which is a classic experiment that was
done a long time ago in the '95 -- I think it was 1995,
but it's so, I think, indicative and is so representative
of the plasticity of the brain, it's also something that
makes you think a lot, involves as you can see, piano
playing.

And in the experiment, there were three groups

of adult human volunteers, none of whom who could play the
piano. A word of advice, if ever you get to volunteer for
an experiment like this, try not be in the control group
because they just stared at a piano for five days, these
poor people.

The luckier group learned five-finger piano

exercises and we all looking to see brain scans even of
five days showing the astonishing change in brain
territory relating to the digits even after five days, but
there's a third group. And in the best of traditions, I'm
going to keep you in suspense about them. Okay.

So here's the five days. Here's the blobby bits

and you can see going from left to right that's the
reference -- it was indeed '95 -- going from left to
right, you can see areas of activation for the digits over
a five-day period. And in the controls who are merely
staring at the piano as you can see the brain is literally
unimpressed.

(Laughter)

However, these guys, the luckier ones who were

learning the five-finger piano exercises you can see even
in five days, the big change that has occurred in
activation, but the most exciting group -- and now the
suspense is over -- were people, the third group who were
merely asked to imagine they were playing a piano. Look
at them. Okay. So now this -- everyone will stand up to
see it.

Okay, I apologize, if you can't see easily.

This tool could be available to anyone who wants it
afterwards by the way if you'd like. I'm sure the
organizers will give you a copy. You're very welcome to

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have it. So what this shows and why it's exciting is the
old dichotomy of mind versus brain or physical versus
mental truly doesn't stack up.

I get so fed up sometimes, although, I did

philosophy myself originally when I meet philosophers and
they act as if they are dealing with all the refined, and
exotic, and wonderful things about human nature. And
people like me are dealing with a kind of squalor of the
chemistry. And we are kind of nerds, you know, who don't
have any emotions and things like that.

So, clearly as you can see, the two are

interchangeable. How this happens, how our thoughts
translate into, you know, the bump and grind of brain
cells is of course another issue entirely. And we can
reflect on that, but the whole point of this is to show
that even a thought is leaving its mark on your brain.

And so unless you're asleep right now, which

let's hope you are not, just think what's happening in
your brain now, just think. You're not doing anything,
but so long as you're awake, imagine what's happening in
your brain. And it does, I think, lead to several
interesting questions, but perhaps what I want to focus on
is what is a thought? What is thinking?

Why is thinking, let's say compared to an

emotion. Think of an emotion, you know, a baby cries, a
dog wags its tail, a cat purrs, you will scream, or cry,
or laugh. How is that different from a business plan, or
a fantasy, or a lie, or a hope, or a rational argument?
I'd like to suggest to you that any thought irrespective
of what it is has a distinguishing feature that you end up
into different place from where you started.

A equals B, B equals C so A equals C. And how

did you get to this different place, by a sequence of
steps. So a thought, I'd like to suggest to you is a
linear sequence of steps that therefore requires a
timeframe in a way that an emotion does not. An emotion
is one-off, a thought is a sequence.

And why -- this is particularly, I think helpful

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or interesting thought is the man that developed the
treatment for the movement to sort of Parkinson's disease
in the last century came up with this quote, he said,
thinking is indeed, "Thinking is movement confined to the
brain." Now the reason I'm stressing this, and I'd like
to come back to this later, what I see the importance of
linearity of thought.

We talk about thinking straight, of being on

track. And sometimes, when you're very confused, you're
saying I'm going to write it down and that is because
you're imposing on yourself a formal linear sequence that
enables an attention span, enables you to end up through a
logical sequence to end up in another place.

And I think that if you like the rigor of a

sentence, of a thought therefore go very closely together
and that also will echo something that is deeply wired
into us which is the notion of a story, a journey. One
thing happens, then the next thing happens, and the next
thing happens.

And if you can hold that thought as something

that I would suggest you is important for humans and
distinguishes us from most of the other creatures in the
animal kingdom, we could then reflect on how that may or
may not be flourishing with screen technology.

But we are still on our course here. And if we

are saying "Well, what happens, I am a neuroscientist, I
want to know when one sees a picture like that what's
happening at the level of the brain cells. What's
happening at the nuts and bolts of the brain cells? How
is it working?" And in order to answer that question we
go to our old friends, the rats because you can't ask a
rat to play the piano. Well, you can, but you're not
going to get very far.

So what you do in order to manipulate an

environment for a rodent is to actually give them
something that they really enjoy as you'll appreciate,
they are highly explorative creatures. And what you can
do and this is from my own work, is you can put them in a
so-called enriched environment.

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 Now enrichment for a rat doesn't mean so they
come to Aspen and sit around at the festival -- well of
course they are here now lurking away, but they don't
obviously need to do anything quite so specialized. For a
rat, an enriched environment is this, and look how happy
they look. Look, he knows he's not in the control group,
he's having a lovely time there. Smiling away.

So they have this lovely, enriched, interactive

environment. And then what you can do is look at single
brain cells which you couldn’t do in humans of course and
see if there is any difference, has an interaction, has a
stimulating environment changed the brain cells of the
rats.

I think, you probably guessed the answer because

I wouldn't set it up in such a rhetorical way, if the
answer was no. So this is what happens -- also I
apologize, sorry. Sorry, it is going backwards. Okay, so
this is what happens with the rats. Okay. So this is a
rat from a standard environment where most of you are
probably not familiar with this, the blobby bit is the
main part of the cell and I'd like you to focus on the
branches that are coming out. That's what brain cells
look like.

I know it looks a bit weird, but anyway just

look at the branches and compare them with the brain cell
from an animal from an enriched environment -- also I keep
pressing the wrong thing, here we are. And I hope you can
see that the enriched environment has caused more branches
to grow. Now why is this interesting or important?

Well, everyone here is familiar with the notion

of exercise, at least familiar with the notion if not the
reality of it, that if you stimulate -- if you stimulate
muscle, it grows and becomes effective and strong. And if
like my little brother who broke his ankle quite recently,
for some reason, you can't exercise muscles. He was
astonished how quickly his calf muscle atrophied and
became visibly smaller and weaker.

So you use it or you lose it. And I think

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everyone is familiar with the idea. So it is with brain
cells, here you're stimulating the brain cells in this
case with the rat with the interactive environment, but
they respond not just by growing in bulk, they grow
branches. Now why is that interesting or important?
Well, and this has also happened with the piano players, I
would suggest.

When you're making brain cells work hard and

they grow branches why that helps them is what you're
doing is increasing the surface area of the brain cell.
And by increasing the surface area, which doesn't sound
that special, what you're actually doing is enabling your
brain cell to make more connections with other brain cells
because there is more space, physically just more space
for more connections to come in.

So just a recap. A stimulating interactive

environment, be it for a rat or a human being will make
brain cells work hard that means they will grow more
branches that will increase their surface area which means
and this is the key point, they will make more
connections.

Now, why would you want to make more

connections? Let's get back to being a human. I'd like
to suggest to you, connections give meaning over time.
Let's take something like this. When you're born into a
booming buzzing confusion in the words of the great
psychologist William James, you'll evaluate something like
this in purely sensory terms, you've no choice, how sweet,
how fast, how cold. In the case of the ring, it'll be a
gold, shiny thing.

A child would be attracted to this because it's

a smooth surface, they might want to put it in their
mouth. They can stick things through it, they could roll
it, you know, the sensory properties of this object are in
itself perhaps quite attractive, but as slowly the days
turns to weeks, turn to months, and as those connections
are growing, as you're interacting with this object sooner
you will learn from experience that this is something that
goes on fingers.

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 And then you will learn as you have more
interaction and more experience with many types of rings,
this is something and it goes on one finger and it only
goes on one finger under certain circumstances. So you
will learn as you grow, and as those connections are
forming, you will learn that if you see someone wearing
one of these, it says something about them. It means
something, it has a significance. Then you may acquire
one of your own when you are old.

And it might be that initially that is the most

special thing to you not because of its intrinsic value,
but because of all the associations that it triggers. And
then sadly things might change. It might go from the
honeymoon through to the divorce. And that might then
become the most bitter thing, the most hated thing. And
all these complex associations might be triggered by an
object a child would just want to put in his mouth.

And what's changed is not the object, it's what

has gone on up here that has changed, it's the
connections. We say that we've gone from a sensory to a
cognitive state. So connections then are personalizing
objects and people around you. They are enabling you to
escape the press of the senses so you can see beyond
sensory value to personalize meaning to things.

Also connections help you understand something.

So say, this is a ghost by the way. Well ghosts like in
England (inaudible) it's a real English ghost. How would
I come on dressed like this, I doubt if anyone here would
have been very frightened, but a two-year-old could well
be very frightened and indeed a dementia patient would
have been very frightened. And why is that, it's because
a small child does not have the checks and balances that
we have to enable us to understand, see beyond the scary
face value to understand, this is someone just dressed up,
that this is not life-threatening.

You only know that because of your experiences

and because of the connections that are already there.
And indeed, as one gets dementia if one gets dementia
which as I -- hope you heard yesterday is a disease of
older people, it's not a natural consequence of aging. If

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sadly you're a victim of that, then what happens is this,
as you can see from this charming Swedish lithograph is
the connections, the branches atrophy so they recapitulate
childhood.

So here you see the embryo, the fetus, the early

postnatal, and the mature brain cell characterized by the
growth of these lovely branches, but if you have dementia
sadly, you're back in the state of the child, the booming
buzzing confusion that sadly characterizes Alzheimer's
among other dementias.

So you can see that connections enable you to

have a personalized take on the world, but also to
navigate, to interpret what happens. So you're born in
this booming buzzing confusion where let's say, your mom
is just a mere series of blobs, and colors, and textures,
but gradually it will form into a pattern, a pattern
that's a face, a face with features let's hope daily in
your life that would then mean something in a way that
others do not. So this is how you've personalized your
brain.

I would like to suggest to you that that's

indeed what the mind is. It's not some airy, fairy
philosophical alternative to the squalor of the physical
brain. It is indeed the personalization of your physical
brain through the dynamic configurations of your
(inaudible) connections that are driven in turn by your
unique experiences.

And that is what happens in your life story, we

talk about a life story. We talk about our memories,
which is why Alzheimer's is so devastating because it's
taking away from us a very central part of what we regard
as our identity. I'd suggest to you that here we are, I
love this picture, this is what people think Oxford is
like, here we are living our lives.

Everyone in this picture is like everyone in

this room, we are on a unique trajectory in time and
space. Again, it's a story, it's linear, you can't go
back and forth. You have a sequence of events and you may
be aware sometimes of how one has impacted on the other,

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sometimes not, unless you go into deep psychoanalysis or
something. But what happens is sequences of events will
shape your connections which in turn will inform your
present and how you interpret the present and help you
plan hopefully a long and prosperous future.

And this is what I would suggest is our identity

which is why it's so special to us. And all of which is
due to the connections in your brain which you have up to
a 100,000 on a 21-year-old. So that's the end of the
course, that's the neuroscience. Not the end of the talk,
it's the end of the course.

You can see I hope how neuroscience is giving us

insights into the deep questions of what is personality,
what is identity, what is a mind. Not necessarily come up
with all the answers, but giving us a way now of exploring
one of the big questions which is what is the 21st century
environment going to do if as I hope I've persuaded you,
the environment plays an essential part in making you the
person you are, then clearly if you are living in a
environment like this -- these are not joke things, these
are available for purchase.

Even at a small age, surely this will have to

have an impact. Now whether it's good or bad is another
issue, but it's got to have an impact in some way. And I
know this will be hard for people to see at the back, but
this is just to show you that this is backed up by data.
For those of you who are at back who can't read this, but
you're welcome to talk afterwards. This is a paper from
2014 showing the -- in say 13 to 18-year-old, the total
time spent daily on technology allowing for multitasking
is 18 hours a day.

So my case rests. That's all I have to say.

This is from British Ofcom, we have some good Ofcom which
regulates the communications industry in the UK and this
is from that. Recently, a survey showed -- we now spend
more time in front of the screen than in bed. And before
any wit offs, what about if you use your Ipad in bed, I
think they are controlled for that, you know, it's not
been (inaudible).

15
 So as well as looking into the science which we
are about to do in a minute, we can just look at the goods
and services and the activities of the zeitgeist of our
current culture. One that fascinates me a lot is this, I
don't know if people recognize this or know what this is.
This is called planking, okay. Here we go. Here's
another example. And what you do apparently is that you
line up like a plank, you know, in unusual scenarios and
then you put it on the Internet and then people look at it
and that's it.

(Laughter)

So if anyone is a closet fan of planking

perhaps you could explain afterwards why this is such an
interesting way of spending one's time because it didn't
mean anything, but nonetheless, so in the moment.
Similarly, how often do we see this, of course, where
people are ignoring the three-dimensional real world
around them and really their center of consciousness is
the small screen increasingly mobile one.

Now because of that I would suggest this is a

very different environment than 5th century Athens or
indeed 10 or 20 years ago in Aspen or sort of wherever you
all are. And therefore I would suggest the brain will be
changing corresponding ways and that's why Tricia said I
was controversial, but that in itself cannot be
controversial because if we have the evolutionary mandate
to adapt to the environment, and the environment is
changing, the brain will change. Everyone agrees that,
every neuroscientist would buy into that.

The big issue is whether it's good or bad, what

we want and so on and like most things, I think I said the
quote yesterday, "For every complex situation there is
always a simple answer and it's always wrong." So
clearly, we need to unpack that and that's what I would
like to do with you now. As we look at how the brain will
be changing in corresponding ways, this is incidentally
just one of many references showing micro-structural
abnormalities for people who are heavy Internet users.

So what I'm trying to do because this is not a

16
technical audience, I didn't just want to explore ideas,
great though they are, I wanted to show you, this is
backed up by the science, but at the same time I didn't
want to get so technical that people kind of find
themselves dosing off. So I have tried to intersperse a
little bit the hard science or the evidence with the
ideas.

I think what we need to do because it's a

complex scenario is unpack the environment of the screen
and that I think is not very helpful when people say our
screen is good or bad, it is like saying is a car good or
bad. And because the screen culture is an all-pervasive
one, it needs to be unpacked like any culture needs to be
unpacked. And if you think about it nowadays you could
wake up, you could work, you could go shopping, you could
play games, you could go dating all without seeing another
human being.

You could spend -- as shown by this report that

every waking hour in a world from the screen without any
direct contact, so in a way, it's become an end not a
means to an end for some. And because of that, I think we
need to unpack different aspects and I'd like to take
three.

The first being what is the impact of social

networking sites? How often do we see things like this?
This is not an advert for Pepsi, or perhaps it was, but
there's not much of an advert because I think but also sad
that these kids are not looking at each other in the eyes,
they are not interacting with each other at all.

Which expects the question about why do we want

to look at each other in the eye. If we are losing the
skill for doing that, if we want to communicate this way,
is that such a big deal? Well, let's think about that.
When you communicate you may be aware, really words don't
have much impact. I don't know about the rigor of
assigning 10 percent, but in any event other things matter
a lot, for example eye contact.

I have to take this lady who happens to

establish eye contact with me at the front. And I cruelly

17
freak you out by staring at your eyes. Yeah, sorry about
this. You just sit in the front right -- or I could
equally -- I will freak the gentleman out not by not
looking in the eye at all and going like --

You know, we know that eye contact depends very

much on how well you know the person, the nature of the
relationship and so on and so forth. And it's a very,
very, very important skill for interpersonal communication
and above all for empathy. So in both private and
professional life, it's essential that we get it right.
As is body language, you're not going to confide in
someone who is leaning back with their arms folded and
their eyes averted.

So if someone leaning forward and patting you on

the arm and nodding, then you will feel much more disposed
to opening up to them and to feeling empathy with them.
You don't have to speak a language to know if someone's
angry or sad from the tone, the rate and the volume at
which they speak. And then pheromones, those sneaky
chemicals that we don't really understand very well in
humans, but nonetheless underlie, in my view, when we talk
about the chemistry being right between people.

So I just go on with them, I don't know why or I

don't know, we just didn't hit it off, I don't know why
that could well be pheromones at work. Then perhaps the
most potent form of communication, physical contact even
in a business world you can see these two gentlemen are
touching each other. Similarly -- well, no not similarly,
but on a personal level it is the most powerful form of
communication.

When my dad died in 2011, someone just puts

their arm around you and that is a more powerful form of
communication than someone saying sorry, your father died,
you know, they put their arm around you. So eye contact,
body language, voice firmness, and physical contact are
essential. They are essential for interpersonal
relationships and for empathy under those kind of skills
and yet they are not available on Facebook.

(Laughter)

18
 So assuming everyone in this room was born in
the last century, we had the experience already of
learning eye contact, interpreting voice turn, and body
language, and when, and where, how to touch someone. If
you are someone born in this century, perhaps that's less
sure, if you are someone who is spending a lot of the time
communicating with your thumbs rather than your mouth, as
happened to -- the case in Belfast recently, the head
teacher had to get a special therapist in to get the kids
to talk each other -- are we perhaps endangering the
things that we take for granted in terms of empathy with
each other.

And there is a study here for Michigan State

University showing empathies to client in the last 30
years, but in this report it shows particularly marked in
the last 10, which of course would coincide with the
advent of Facebook.

And controversially one might expect then that

perhaps the screen might predispose people to how the kind
of behaviors we've only seen previously in people with
autistic spectrum disorders, where of course there is a
problem, an impairment with establishing empathy and
understanding how others might be feeling.

So, just to rattle through this, there is a link

between EEG that’s atypical brainwave responses and face
recognition where you can't distinguish so readily between
say a door and a person, that's characteristic of autism
and that's also repeated in heavy Internet users. There
is a link between autistic spectrum disorders and an
under-functioning part of the brain which we will come on
through in a second, called the prefrontal cortex, this is
indicative of a more literal take on the world, note I
will put the references in here because as you might
imagine one must back this up.

There is a link between early screen experiences

and the later development of autism, a link between
autistic conditions and the appeal of screen technologies
and I think that's because for autistic people the playing
field is now level because we are all in that state when

19
we are on the screen, we are not using body language or
voice or eye contact, and physical contact, we are not
using those things, so we are all in the same position.
And finally, a link between autistic spectrum disorders
and compulsive videogame use.

So the good news however is that this like all

things with the brain is not casting stones, sorry to mix
metaphors like that, the idea of a brain being casting the
stone. And this is a recent paper out by Yale (phonetic)
where they taught these preteens who were performing very
poorly in empathy skills and half of them were to sent to
summer camp for five days, they have their digital devices
confiscated -- compared to the controllers -- and as you
can see they had a significant improvement in their skills
with non-verbal emotional cues even after five days.

Because -- my come back to my central point, the

brain adapts to the environment, it will always do and if
the environment changes the brain will change.

So just to show again that this is something

that is recognized as an issue, the British government
commissioned this report from the Science Advisor John
Beddington in 2013, you can download, this is bristling
with metrics and histograms and pie charts and the like,
where he explores the evidence that he says human identity
is becoming more volatile because of social networking
sites.

The volatile nature, the more fragile nature as

a result of now your identity being at the mercy not so
much of friends but let's be honest; when you have 500
friends, they are not really friends, are they, they are
an audience. And they are an audience that need constant
entertainments and to be impressed and you have to really
make sure they are entertained, so therefore you do this
all the time.

And one can have a look at history of blogging

to see this, history of blogging. '99, I just have to
tell someone about this thing my cat did today; 2000 --
you know what's coming obviously -- 2004, cat pictures;
2005, moving cat pictures; and that pinnacle of

20
civilization, 1:00, PM the cat just sneezed, 1:02, cat
sneezed again, 1:04, cat hasn't sneezed recently, getting
worried.

(Laughter)

And it does suggest that these are people who

are -- I would like to think in some kind of existential
crisis, you know, they are a bit like three-year-olds,
"Look at me, I am putting on one sock, look at me I am
putting on another sock, you don't look at me, look at
me." How do I know I exist, you know, I must have
constant feedback in order to justify who I am and what I
am because I know in a narrative.

And I think that what's particularly marked is

in the old days -- when we were all young in the last
century, doesn't that sound awful to say -- we rehearsed
having identities and narratives by saying to a little
friend, let's make up a game and you be this and you be
that and I will be this and you go there. And you didn't
need complex props, you know, famously with a box that the
present came in, or it would be just a drawing pad or a
tree. And a tree doesn't ask you to climb it, and a
drawing pad doesn't ask you to draw in it.

No, you drive the narrative, you decide, you

make up the story, you are rehearsing if you like and in a
narrative and in a narrative and in a life story, I will
come back again to that linearity as well as rehearsing a
long attention span. And I worry that people now who are
spending most of their time on the rapidity of outputs to
inputs.

People who, I don't know why, in England --

perhaps it's the same way people download the food they
are about to eat for some reason, you know, or upload and
there is lots of it (inaudible) something, you know, so
hamburger and chips, they will post that they are eating a
hamburger and chips. So it again baffles me, why one
would want to look at that or find it interesting, but
they need the reassurance.

And again in the zeitgeist of our society,

21
perhaps you have heard of Clout, where they give you a
score for how important you are, I wonder how many people
at Aspen here at the Festival of Ideas will qualify as
highest Clout scores because it's done entirely on your
social networking traffic of course.

Back to the science, we now know what a surprise

is, a decline in self-esteem and an increase in Gnosticism
with heavy Facebook use. So we are facing perhaps a
rather fragile nation of identity where we need constant
reassurance, we are all the needy, we are very self-
referential. But above all where identity is now defined
externally rather than by and in a narrative. I will just
leave that thought with you.

So the something about social networking sites

is, let's talk from the premise where we are lonely, which
is bad for the health, this will mean we want to share our
feelings with others, that makes us feel good. And I
cited yesterday, a wonderful study at Harvard showing that
people would rather have the opportunity to talk about
themselves than monetary reward.

So if you are an employer just think, someone

wants a pay rise, say you can talk about yourself for a
bit, avoids the pay rise. This because you feel good,
release a chemical, we will come on to in a minute called
dopamine and that therefore because you don't have the
hand break of body language, the beauty of body language
is nature's way of putting the hand brake on. Here you
are wanting to talk about yourself but someone's frowning
or turning away or folding their arms, you are not going
to open up, this natural tendency we have to talk about
ourselves does not have a handbrake with social
networking.

So away we rattle talking about ourselves, so

there is no privacy, so the real you is therefore now very
vulnerable, so what you do, you can seal the real you and
favor an ideal you, so that makes you even more lonely,
okay.

So, what is this real you? Well, I think this

real you nowadays needs a lot of propping up, you need

22
external symbols, you need the one feature that you also
learn that's your face, hence the rise and rise of the
selfie I would suggest, and above all you need -- if you
had a permanent symbol, something that was by definition
permanent, wouldn't that be great. And I am just saying
this is speculation for accounting for something that is a
mystery to me, which is the rise in tattoos.

Tattoos has been around for ages, is it perhaps

because, here we are, it's not just the tattoo, it's a
story they say, self-expression, it's a lifestyle, okay,
could that be indefinite.

Right, briefly on to gaming, I am getting tight

for time, where is my chairman, I know you are going to
tell me in five minutes, can I take five more minutes
please, I know, because I would rather finish this story
and have a reduced question time if people are okay with
that.

Okay. So, we are on to video games. And this

is from Daphne Bavelier, a great psychologist about the
benefits of video games and she says that it improves
plasticity and learning, attention and vision, all of
which in certain circumstances is true. And I want to
mention that because I don't want it to seem like the
ultimate Luddite.

On the other hand there are issues that relates

to video games that are important, for example, the rise
and rise of violent video games, the most popular at least
in 2013 all of these Battle Field, Call of Duty, Assassins
Creed, Batman and Grand Theft Auto all are very violent.
So, could we be seeing a word for some people like this
increasingly, how often do you see that.

And we do know, not that they are going to go

out and murder someone, no, but it will make people more
adversarial because the brain adapts. And here you see
brain scans where repeated exposure to media violence, it
becomes the default. As you can see on the left, the
violent stimuli is causing a desensitization of the brain
compared to the neutral stimuli.

23
 So these again, this is a meta review of 136
papers with 130,000 participants where they conclude, yes,
there is desensitization, increased arousal, aggressive
cognition, aggressive behavior.

Okay. So, perhaps even more ubiquitous than

people who are adversarial, it's people with short
attention spans and the rise and rise of ADHD especially
with younger people. And sure enough it has been shown
that there is a link between television and video game
exposure, and the development of attentional problems, and
indeed impulsiveness, and a bidirectional causality with
video games and attentional problems.

Okay, some people say they are addicted to video

games and there is indeed evidence of that also, this from
our Daily Telegraph you can see was citing this paper here
by (inaudible) which showed that kids playing video games
a lot had an enhanced area of the brain shown by the
yellow blob. What does this blob do? Well, it's an area
of the brain that releases a chemical that we have
mentioned already, that's very important for addiction, of
all drugs of addiction will release this chemical, it also
makes you excited, makes you feel good because also --
that's the reward in case you wonder what the award looks.

And yes, indeed I heard someone say, yes, indeed

it is dopamine. And what dopamine does, it's a very hard
working transmitter, but for our purposes one of its
important actions in the brain is where it acts like a
fountain to inhibit an area I mentioned briefly just now,
the prefrontal cortex.

Now why is that important, well, the prefrontal

cortex is an area of the brain shown here in turquoise,
which is a very sophisticated part of the brain in
evolutionary terms, it's 33% of the human brain, but only
17% of the chimp brain. And we know that when it is
under-functioning, we see a different mindset to when it's
functioning.

Here -- and you might recognize this in people;

strong feelings, as opposed to thought; sensory versus
cognitive; living in the here and now, as opposed to the

24
past, the present and the future; the external environment
dominating, as opposed to internal perceptions; the world
having little meaning, as opposed to a personalized
meaning; a reduced sense of who you are; of self, a strong
sense of self, as opposed to, hey, you are living in a
world that has no time, no space you are just having an
emotion; here is clear time space reference.

This is mainly infants and children because the

prefrontal cortex is only fully mature in late teenagers,
early 20s and it's during adolescence that you have
biggest episodes you are ever going to have of dopamine in
your brain.

So, you can see here, there is two modes and you
might, those of you who are parents to teenage kids might
recognize the left hand panel, but what also is
interesting is we pay money to put ourselves in the left
hand panel. I would like to suggest that wine, women and
song; drugs and sex and rock and roll are always in which
we put ourselves to that left hand panel. We disable our
connections by taking drugs and alcohol, or we put
ourselves in a world stripped of all cognitive content, or
a world that's very stimulated by the senses.

And this has gone back since the ancient Greeks,

this is from Euripides Bacchae, where the King Pentheus is
being torn apart by these wine crazed women. We talk
about having a sensational time, don't we, if I said let's
go out now and have a cognitive time, is anyone going to
come, no, they are not.

You might choose, to -- no, you might not want

to get drunk and worship Dionysus, but you might want to
go white water rafting where you let your go, you blow
your mind, you are out of your mind. And those phrases, I
think, are more than mere coincidence, that's exactly what
you are doing if you accept this buy-in of how to define
the mind.

This, I love this one from Australia where the

selling point was, "Totally out of control," that was the
selling point. Now, also there is other conditions we can
study that have under functioning prefrontal cortex and

25
one of them, interesting enough, is obesity. People with
a high body mass index, so that is heavier relative to
their height, example here, have under-functioning
prefrontal cortex.

And such people -- and this is really important

are more reckless in gambling tasks, obese people are more
reckless. Now, how does that tie in with another
condition, schizophrenia. Well, schizophrenia, a complex
mental disorder nonetheless has certain parallels with
children namely both are easily distracted, both have
short attention spans, neither can interpret proverbs, if
you say to a schizophrenic, what does it mean people who
live in glass houses, no to throw stones. They will say,
if your house is made of glass and I throw a stone your
house will break, which is kind of missing the point, and
both have under-functioning prefrontal cortex.

So, how do we put all of those different things

together, obesity, childhood, reckless gambling,
addiction? Well anyone who eats knows the consequence of
eating, but the thrill of the food for some trumps the
consequences, anyone who gambles knows what's going to
happen, but the thrill of the roll of the dice trumps the
consequences. How does that chime with schizophrenia,
well, if you look at the series of paintings top left,
everyone will recognize that is a cat, bottom right no one
would recognize that as a cat, okay.

And what has happened I think that bottom right

picture which, sorry, those of you at the back it's just a
lot of blobs and so on, surely suggest a transition that
we have mentioned already, but in the reverse direction,
instead of going from sensory to cognitive we are now
cognitive to sensory.

So, could it be that all of these very different

conditions all of which are characterized by the common
factor of an under-functioning prefrontal cortex are where
the pressors of senses trumps the consequences -- the
thrill of the senses.

So, go back to our dichotomy here, what I would

like to suggest is that video games are tilting people in

26
that direction more than normal, okay. And if that's the
case, we can think of a continuous cycle where the intense
stimulation of the screen mandates a fast response, that
makes you excited, so dopamine is released and that
underlines reward seeking pleasure, addictive behavior,
more dopamine is released, this inhibits the prefrontal
cortex, you enter a mindset similar to that of the child
the schizophrenic or the obese person, you therefore seek
now a drive of sensation over cognition. Where do you
find it best? The screen, of course. And around we go.
Just a suggestion.

Okay. Finally, search engines and I promise I

will only be five minutes allowing for 10 minutes of
questions if that's okay. This is from the World Economic
Forum a while ago where they said that whilst there is a
mantra that being connected is a good thing, they said,
well perhaps we should question that and perhaps being
hyper-connected is bad.

For example, they coined the phrase of the

digital wildfire, where things spread uncontrollably
without you first perhaps thinking and using what the
information is, that’s coming in, and this is a study of
the Google generation recently in a again it's a research
article, the Google generation appears to behave very
differently, by their own admission they are less
confident and they're searching (inaudible), this is also
demonstrated by the fact they view fewer pages, visit
fewer domains, and do fewer searches, tellingly their
search statements were much more the product of cut and
paste. The Google generation also have poorer working
memories and are less competent at multitasking, both of
which may have implications for research and online
environments, that is a study.

That then says we are multitasking and, with

yesterday Gary Samore was talking about multitasking we
now know that multitasking again leads to microstructural
abnormalities in the area of the brain called anterior
cingulate cortex as you can see here.

Okay. So some of the issues I think with

thinking about the screen and how we learn from the screen
and we don't have time obviously to explore this are, are
video games good for learning if they're pleasurable and

27
excited, well I would say that's like giving kids
amphetamine, so I think an inspirational teacher would be
better, frankly.

Paper versus silicon, again there are

differences when you handle paper compared to when you
just scan from a screen, hyper texting can be distracting
as supposed to informative, IPads have been shown in the
classroom to have value but only when under the
supervision of a inspirational teacher.

Memory can be affected if you now just look

something up rather than internalize it, multitasking is
not necessarily all it's cracked up to be, and above all I
think we need to differentiate information from knowledge,
yes we get lots of information, that is not the same as
knowledge.

So, what is knowledge, well let's think about

the screen, if I asked you what honor was and you googled
honor, this is that you'd get. The queen comes out first
from the UK Google, of course, so this is -- now would a
Martian or a small child understand what honor was from
that. I don't think so.

Moreover imagination, I love this quote of

imagination, it should be used to not to escape reality,
to procreate, and where is the room for imagination when
you have these second hand images. Moreover when you're
working with a screen, say playing a video game, do you
care about the princess? I bet you don't care about her
at all. You don't care about her, but when you read a
book you care about the princess, and what's the
difference, they're both fictional princesses, why should
you care about Princess Maria but not care about the
princess in the video game.

I'd like to suggest that princess in a book is

like you, she has relationships like you, she has meaning
therefore like you because she has connections like you,
above all she has a life story like you. And that gives
her a significance which is why you want to see what
happens to her.

Here's someone who obviously echoes my thoughts,

I rise at the level of (inaudible) the sort of
overwhelming repetitive information is in fact affecting
cognition, it's affecting deeper thinking, I still believe

28
sitting down and reading a book is the best way to learn
something, I worry we're loosing that, from Eric Smith the
Chairman of Google.

And also again I think it's a lovely thing to

read stories to kids and there is evidence now the parents
are letting kids look at TV rather than bonding with them
and letting them rehearse imagination, and attention
spans. And this is a lovely -- I'm going back now very
briefly -- and shortly to end in case you are worried
about time -- about the importance of stories, this is a
clip from the journalist Ben Macintyre.

From the moment we become aware of others we

demand to be told stories it allows to make sense of the
world, so in having the mind of someone else, in old days
we told stories to make small museums of memory, it
matters not whether the stories are true or imaginary, the
narrative whether oral or written is a staple of every
culture the world over. But stories demand time and
concentration -- note that time and concentration. The
narrative does not simply transmit information but invites
the reader or listener to witness the unfolding of events.

That is why stories I think echo the thought

process, you have the temporal sequence of thinking, you
have a conceptual framework by which you can get a meaning
and this will also enhance your attention span
imagination.

Briefly, lets look then at the mindset of the

future. I'm going to show this one again, it's going to
be a professor in the front row. So these are people
living in a world stripped of all cognitive content, yes
you may have a hierarchy because you're rehearsing the
video games, a mental agility such as also rehearsed in IQ
tests. You've got information processing but that isn't
knowledge, you have a short attention span, icons rather
than ideas because you're used to dealing with literal
things, sensation is a premium, you'll take risk because
actions don't have consequences, low empathy, need for
constant feedback, a weak sense of identity and low grade
aggression.

So, that's the kind of issues, now what can we

do to help people in that situation? Well I think we can
help by shaping environments, turn information into new
ideas. If you take a fact and relate it to other facts,

29
that's what gives a significance. If you place it in a
wider conceptual framework, that's how you understand.
When I was 16, and my brother was 3 I tortured him by
making him learn Shakespeare, by heart. And in it there's
a line from Macbeth, "Out, out brief candle life is but a
poor player," and he learned this off by heart and I just
said, Graham (phonetic) do you know what that means, do
you understand it?

He would have said, "Well I have a candle on my

birthday cake and I blow it out." He wouldn't have seen
it as a parallel to the extinction of life therefore he
would never really understood it. In order to understand
something you have to join up the dots so that they relate
to each other. So, if you can make unprecedented
connections then you have new understanding and new ideas.

Now why is that the saving grace of humanity, if

you have new ideas, Einstein said, this is what -- you
have to be an individual to have new ideas.

And surely that's what is at a premium, remember

the quote that I said at the beginning from Asimov, "The
true leader of mankind will be those that have the new
ideas." And a prerequisite of having new ideas is to be an
individual.

So how can we help people be individuals and

shape an environment where they join the dots up in novel
ways. Well, I think this is a raft of issues I discuss in
my book, Mind Change. Where I draw parallels with climate
change in the sense that both are global, both are
controversial, both are unprecedented, and as we've seen
briefly here, both are multi-faceted. But there is a huge
difference, where as with climate change is damage
limitation.

I think with mind change even though I sounded

perhaps a bit pessimistic I don't mean to be, I just want
to show you how amazing the brain is and how for the first
time ever in human history for many of us who're going to
live for, let's hope all of us, for another 50 years,
second 50 years. What are you going to do with your time?
Now, how are you going to express your individuality?
We've never had the opportunity before to be truly unique
individuals. And as being truly unique individuals we can
have creative ideas and thoughts and therefore not just
have fulfilling lives but also be a benefit to society.

30
 So, I think we could be entering an exciting
time, this is a shameless plug from the book, that's on
sale in the bookshop. I'm sorry I've only left eight
minutes for questions. But you can always email me, you're
welcome to this presentation if you like and let's go
forward in a positive way where we harness this technology
but we do have to decide collectively what we want it to
deliver. Thank you very much.

(Applause)

Thank you. So I am turning to take questions,

yes, the gentleman at the back there. Wait for the phone.
SPEAKER: Is there a difference the way the brain
processes emissive light as opposed to reflective light,
there is two different types of screens out there?

MS. GREENFIELD: Yes, there is, and in my book -

- and I'm not just saying that to plug the book, it's just
research, it is done very rigorously by a woman called
Anna Mangen, Oslo University and she's done studies on
that and shows that you do get eye fatigue from
backlighting of screens and so on.

So, yes, there are effects that one might not be

immediately aware of at the psycho-physical level on
reading from a screen rather than reading from paper.

Yes, the gentleman --

SPEAKER: It's fascinating to me --

MS. GREENFIELD: The mike, the gentleman right

there.

SPEAKER: Your statement about human species

being really virtual learning machines compared to others
in the animal kingdom, I'm fascinated by the lag phase
because the newborn human can't compete with any other
newborn in terms of when they start to learn and the fact
that if left alone we all know they would die immediately,
which is not the case for the newborns of all these people
we are so superior to. What are your thoughts on, have
they been studied and scanned, what is the lag phase
about?

31
 MS. GREENFIELD: Well, the lag phase of learning
and the young -- what we know that we have perhaps one of
the longest childhoods and one of the longer periods of
development simply because we therefore have the
opportunity to be hugely individual, to have individual
experiences as opposed to learning how to respond to
certain situations as you would if you were -- I don't
know -- I don't want to keep knocking the goldfish over --
with the goldfish. But they don't have a lot to learn in
order to then survive in the goldfish bowl, whereas we do
have a lot to learn in order to make the most of our lives

And it's actually adapted to the very different

environments in which we all live and above all, to
develop and express our individuality. And I think that
is the mantra I have which is to develop the individual
and to respect it in others and to derive individuality
not from owning designer handbags and clothes and so on,
but by actually having original ideas.

SPEAKER: And so all along what's happening in

the brain (off mic)?

MS. GREENFIELD: In the first well --

SPEAKER: For the first six months.

MS. GREENFIELD: Well I can say a huge amount is

happening, even in the first six months, we know children
become sensitive to language. There's a lovely study with
Japanese babies and Western babies, and you know that
Japanese people can't distinguish "L's" from "R's", they
say have a nice fright for example when they mean have a
nice flight.
And it's been shown that by the time a Japanese
baby is six months, they -- even though they have a way of
speaking they are all the same, they can't distinguish
those sounds. So we know that there's a huge amount
happens in the first year. Give me a child till he is
seven I will give you the man, the Jesuits said.

The lady up here.

SPEAKER: Hi, I have a question, so obviously

this lecture illustrates something that all of us are
incredibly concerned about this over-reliance and
dependence on technology, not only in our children but

32
frankly in many of us as I took notes on my iPhone
throughout this, and then checked my email occasionally.

So, what do you think is the solution in terms

of harnessing all this incredible power that and positive
things, the social media and the Internet et cetera
present to us but also balance it with the need to
disengage and to allow our branches to form?

MS. GREENFIELD: Well I think you've just said

it, I mean take a rather simple analogy not a very
accurate one but it's a good as a start. I think very few
people would say you're never going to have chocolate
ever, you can't have chocolate ever, ever, ever. But at
the same time someone says they have diet exclusively of
chocolate, you'd feel that they were missing out.

So in a way you need to temper something that is

fun to do, against the backdrop of a real and fulfilling
lifestyle and activities and so on. So that's not to say
one should ban these things but more I think we need to
have, and we don't have this at the moment, a sense of
purpose and direction of where we want to go.

I don't rule the world, I can't tell everyone

what their kid is going to be like, I could ask you
rhetorically what kind of people do you want your kids to
be, which is tantamount to say what kind of education
system do you want? Which in turn means, what kind of
society do you want to live in? Now, there's no simple
answers to that, we need to collectively have a consensus
and a debate as to what kind of things we value and put a
premium. And then work out how we can use the technology
to deliver that.
But just those three handy little things that I
think we're losing that I would like to see, especially
with kids, one is, just occasionally even if it's not
possible with the busy lives, people eating together. And
eating around a table where all digitals devices are
banned. Because I'm no anthropologist but I am aware that
eating is way more important than just taking in calories
simultaneously.

It's bonding with someone and the very word

companion is a sharing of bread with bread, companionaros,
yes is sharing bread, which is a really important thing to
do. And I think the traditional human existence has

33
always been a respect of culture where you sit around a
table eating together at the end of the day. And I think
it would be wonderful to have that more recognized. And
it is nowadays people just graze and eat on their own or
in front of the computer, I think that's very sad.

The second thing is, reading young kid stories,

again, that's hardly a very expensive thing to do. It's
expensive perhaps in terms of time but you're bonding with
the child, you're cuddling them, and they're developing an
attention span and an imagination even if they don't have
strong reading skills which a young child doesn't.

And even now I could say to you, once upon a

time, we're all step forward, just as long as it is once
upon a time, it's the most lovely thing, reading stories
and helping a child develop a sense of narrative but above
all develop an inner world that is not determined by
someone else's second hand, some web designers second hand
imagination.

And the third thing is just getting outside, now

that has a lot of purposes. One is it combats obesity,
two, as Nietzsche, walking even ages thinking processes,
again this literal walking is ageing the thought process.
It also is creativity, there's an interesting study in Ann
Arbor, a place I don't know at all, where there is
apparently an arboretum, and they sent some subjects often
to the arboretum and others into downtown Ann Arbor. And
they did creativity tests on them and found that people
who had been in the natural environment scored higher on
the creativity test compared to the others.

So these are very simple things, eating

together, reading stories, getting outside in the open
air, doing whatever you do, hardly sophisticated or
expensive things to do and I think that'll be nice for all
ages probably.

SPEAKER: The gentlemen hand up.

SPEAKER: Would you like to say a few words

about the future of the brain?

MS. GREENFIELD: Yeah.

SPEAKER: And the -- as we incorporate machines

into our brain?

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 MS. GREENFIELD: Sure. Okay well obviously that
could be another whole lecture. At the risk it sounds as
if I'm trying to just flog my books to you, I've written a
novel called 2121, which you can get on UK, Amazon. I
don't know if it's on sale in the States, but you should
be able there. It's called 21, because that's the date
which is a dystopia. And I think there's two
possibilities for people which is what I write about.

One is, people call the others who are people

who become so solipsistic, they become so obsessed with
the screen, they no longer can communicate, they are
hedonistic, they just live for the moment, and although
they're happy in one sense they've lost out on having any
significance to their lives entirely. And there's a
splinter group called the neo-peres (phonetic) or the NPs
who are the opposite who put over too much premium on
thought processes, who never have fun, who wear grey
clothes, and for whom thought is everything who become
kind of neo platonics. And then the hero is one of these,
who's a brain scientist with eerily similar views on the
brain to myself.

(Laughter)

And he has to go and find out and take over -- I

won't tell you too much -- but anyways, so that -- one can
conjure up various scenarios, one would be that. I'm an
optimist because all scientists are optimists, I would
love to see a world where instead of just treading water
for the second 50 years of life, we now start to think how
can we develop our true individuality, not just with
finger painting or by playing golf or Sudoko or something,
but how can we actually have a fulfillment that previous
generations were denied.

My mother spent her best years in the Blitz

being bombed, she just wanted to live as many people of
that generation just want, Many people sadly around the
world now are obviously are more concerned about shelter
and not being in pain and not being cold. We and our very
progressed society have the first time the luxury of
asking what human beings haven't been able to ask en masse
before, which is, what is the meaning of my life? How can
I make the most of it?

35
 So let's make the most of it. Let's think about
what we would admire, what we want to do? What turns us
on rather than just buying a lot of things. Why can't we
think of ways in which people develop a wonderful sense of
individuality and hence of creativity. And as well
sciences, people make mistakes of saying science as being
very mechanical, it's not. Science is actually as creative
as writing a novel, because you're joining out the dots in
a new way, and that joining out the dots in a new way, as
I'm sure many of you have done, is the most exhilarating
way of spending your life doing that.

Yes, down here. Switch on the mike, because --

especially because you are all kneeling I can't hear you.
Yeah.

SPEAKER: I run a transitional home for mostly

homeless people who come in four categories, some with
mental illnesses, some with substance abuse, parolees and
some just economic hardship, and sometimes all those four
occurring at the same time.

And then I have a thesis -- that is blends in

with a lot of these themes and I've got kind of working on
software for artificial intelligence, and the notion that
I'm working with is that how we interpret our story is
actually more important than what happens to us.

MS. GREENFIELD: Yeah.

SPEAKER: And so in many case now I'm tying it

in also a little bit with evolutionary psychology, and
something that I've been wondering about lately is how is
it that for 35,000 years, we know this through art and
through the archaeology of care where Stone Age people
were taken care of, I mean not just assisted care but
direct care, paralyzed people and so forth. Are we a less
civilization that is life challenged, is our ecology --
our crisis of ecology a crisis of life?

MS. GREENFIELD: Well I don't think we're in a

crisis because in a sense we are now being faced with a
question that no other generations has been faced with,
which is what do you want out of life? And people in the
middle ages didn't have that -- perhaps a few philosophers
might have thought about it. Sorry the philosophers --
but on the whole, the opportunity to actually have the

36
freedom to live a life as you would like to live it, free
of pain, and -- for many people, anxiety and worry.

And that in itself poses a new sets of problems,

so I feel sorry for the kids nowadays because on the one
hand there's huge pressure to be special, to be a
celebrity, to be the individual, at the same time you have
to conform, you have to have the approval of 500 friends.
Now, clearly these things are incompatible. You can't on
the one hand conform and be the same as everyone else and
at the same time be special and different.

And I think, again, in the introduction you

heard that, I'm controversial, I think it's such fun being
controversial, it's great because you can stand up and be
yourself. You know that lovely line in Shakespeare, the
nature -- the elements so mixed in him that nature might
stand up and say to all the world, this was a man.

And I think that that really is something I

personally would want to aim for and it's something
perhaps that we are losing in our desire because we're
lacking confidence in our desire to be the same as
everyone. And because we don't have the robust and the
resources to combat and stand up for what we believe in,
maybe.

And I've now noticed it's 11:25, so my minder at

the front is saying, can I just say, you're very welcome
to contact me on the website, you're very welcome to the
presentation and you are even more welcome to buy the book
in the bookstore. Thank you very much.

(Applause)
* * * * *

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