The rush to comment on the redundancy of Baroness Greenfield carried many of the usual prejudices. The Economist was the most balanced.
I take a very personal position as Baroness/Professor Susan Greenfield is one of my greatest heroines and role models.
Legiond'honour, and Australian of the year 2006, like Zaha Hadid she seems more honoured outside her country than within.
An intelligent, educated, articulate, amazing speaker, who is media friendly, by which I mean she is often in the press, although it is some years since her exciting TV programmes on the brain.
My personal experience was to join the Royal Institution in the hope of meeting her, but also because of my own interest in the brain and how little we know about it.
My first experience of a Royal Institution event was a FED on Parkinson's.
Friday Evening Discourse are a little bit of old England. It's black tie which is fine for the men, but freezing for the women in evening dress, since they are mostly in Winter. On the stroke of 8pm the speaker walks in, delivers the discourse and then goes out to have dinner.
Tamper with the old boy set up at your peril. Truly a British Institution, and many long term members are unhappy at changes to it. There was some thought that if FEDs were modernized more people might come, especially younger and a more varied audience, rather as has happened at major concert halls for the last 10 years.
As I entered the lecture theatre my heart sank, as I perceived all the people in the room to be of a certain age, including grey hair and many in wheel chairs presumably with Parkinson's. Not a mixed or inclusive audience.
Then at the eleventh hour, the side doors at the top flew open and in came, on one side a number of young women in headscarves. On the other a number of Afro Caribbean young women.
I remember Baroness Greenfield saying at the end of a session, let's have the final questions from the younger people in the audience, since they are the next generation to carry on our research into the brain.
So opening up science to young people and a wider audience? I think so.
Somewhere it is written:
"Thou shalt not question the wisdom of the web or the internet. Fire an brimstone shall be your punishment. You shall be thrown out of your Grace and Favour flat and the keys shall be taken away."
I have heard Baroness Greenfield deliver: " ID: the quest for identity in the 21st century" on 3 occasions. Once was to the Women of the Year for their Annual lecture, and it created heated debate from the techies in the audience. Controversial Yes. Are we afraid of controversy?
She has no particular research on this, she's working on the other end, dementia and Alzheimer's and Parkinson's.
It is also interesting that she's been heavily criticised by a prominent journalist, asking for the research. But this journalist took his information from the Sun!! I wonder if he watched the actual talk?
Two prominent trustees have resigned in protest and criticise the redundancy.
It is my understanding that she is asking questions. " Might a long time spent gaming or social interacting on the web, influence the development of plastic malleable minds?" She know about how neurons develop and how plastic the brain is and how development can be set or stunted in the early stages.
She would like someone to put money and time into researching. Surely if we may be affecting young people's development, in terms of empathy, and ability to communicate, it's a concern. If the research proves otherwise fine.
However, there have been 2 recent studies mentioned in the news, which seem to support this hypothesis.
I thought that's what scientist and philosophers were for. To ask questions.
Is it now dangerous to ask questions which go against the received opinion?
Viktor Meyer, believes that unless we take control of the web's remembering, we may soon become a self censoring people, rather like in the powerful film the Lives of Others.
Norman Doidge, in The Brain that Changes Itself, has a very interesting argument in Ch 4 when he examines the damage done by obsessive use of the internet, literally damaging personal relations.
Fortunately as a psycho-therapist he's able to repair it.
Even, finally, the architect and primogenitor of Virtual reality, Jaron Lanier has reservations about the possibility that we are encouraged and shaped into homogenous beings. His new book, You are Not a Gadget, examines some of these possibilities, and he can hardly be accursed of being a luddite.
Even if Susan Greenfield is totally wrong on the dangers of social networking, virtual reality and gaming, surely its worth asking some hard questions, and raising research.
What's the story behind the story?
As the human, feminine friendly face of the royal Institution she has been a brilliant innovator and provocateur for the 21t Century science. What ever else those achievements cannot go un-recognised.
2010©christina@wwom.org
