Product Description

If you’ve ever wondered what effect video games have on your children’s minds or worried about how much private information the government and big companies know about you, ID is essential reading.

Professor Susan Greenfield argues persuasively that our individuality is under the microscope as never before; now more then ever we urgently need to look at what we want for ourselves as individuals and for our future society.

ID is an exploration of what it means to be human in a world of rapid change, a passionately argued wake-up call and an inspiring challenge to embrace creativity and forge our own identities.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #14283 in Books
• Published on: 2009-04-02
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

Review
'Susan Greenfield is often described as the foremost female scientist in Britain, but she is one of the best of any gender, anywhere, at getting complicated ideas across' (Independent on Sunday )

‘Greenfield is an entertaining writer, a brilliant neuroscientist and an excellent exponent of the latest advances in brain chemistry’ (New Humanist )

'Susan Greenfield enthrals and intrigues her readers in equal measure . . . a force of intellect and a force of nature’ (John Humphrys )

'Asks good questions, describes intriguing facts and makes some interesting suggestions' (Financial Times )

'she is so fluent and persuasive a writer that just reading this important book perks up the grey cells' (Telegraph )

About the Author
Baroness Susan Greenfield is Professor of Pharmacology at Oxford University and Director of the Royal Institution. She is also an Honorary Fellow of the College of Physicians and has received 24 honorary degres from universities all over the world. Neuroscientist, broadcaster and author, she has received the Michael Faraday medal from the Royal Society for developing public understanding of science and made the Daily Mail's 100 Most Influential Women in Britain list in 2003. She received a CBE and a life peerage in 2001 and was awarded the L’Ordre National de la Legion d’Honneur in 2003.  In 2004/5 she was ‘thinker in residence’ reporting to the Premier of South Australia. She is based in Oxford.

Customer Reviews

hotchpotch
A hotchpotch of social, educational and technological commentary, with a reactionary emphasis, interspersed with chunks of neuroscience and psychology. The neuroscience is familiar stuff about neurons, synapses, serotonin, dopamine, plasticity, case studies like Phineas Gage and a description of a brain dissection class. The psychology includes discussion of disorders such as schizophrenia and depression. The technological commentary is about Google, Facebook and the fact we're spending more time using mobile phones and screen-based devices. (Well I knew that.) There are questions asked about what the implications are for our future identities but these are mainly left hanging.

What I struggled to find were interesting new ideas or explanations to unify the material. I did however find some familiar errors of reasoning.

For example, depression supposedly results, among other things, from a paucity of serotonin. Not being a psychologist, I may be missing something, but this doesn't make sense. They've looked inside depressed peoples' brains and found another symptom: low serotonin. But they have no theory to explain it, which means they have no theory of depression. (Low serotonin might actually be acting to reduce depression. Rather like braking correlates with car accidents. Brake pedals don't cause accidents, they generally help prevent them.)

The author dislikes video games and is worried about their effect on children. The biggest objection seems to be that they are displayed on a 2D screen. Books are preferable. But wait, don't books consist of 2D surfaces? (i.e. pages) Book readers are solitary humans imbibing a 1D stream of secondhand text. Books were also resisted by parents and reactionaries when they became cheap and popular. And if language is so important, why does the author seem to assume that children won't want to improve it later on?

Apparently screen-based life also kills the imagination. The Oompa-Loompas claimed this over 40 years ago and I still want to know why.

The reality is that video games are increasingly multiplayer, they involve language and text, and even where this isn't so they require intensive problem solving. This creates knowledge and transferable metaknowledge in the mind of the player, which is the benefit that the author has missed. They aren't "compulsive"; when a player stops improving, he starts to get bored and does something else.

ID does contain some interesting facts and snippets. But science is about explanations, and I just can't live in the author's world of socialising, Doystevsky and "good old homework".

where's my body?
One of the interesting aspects of these frameworks for identity is the absence of the physical body. As Greenfield is talking about the Consumer Society, which begs us to treat our bodies in terms of having rather than being, this dislocation is strange.
Greenfield is enthusiastic - and it is always good to read something written with passion.
And, other reviewer: books are three dimensional, highly tactile objects, utterly different from attempting to read or study using an e-book. Try it.
I can play computer games for hours, may be it'll be the problems of reading a pdf, but I can only bear an e-book for 30 minutes.

Mind opening
Fantastic book which can really revolutionise your concept of mind. Very enjoyable and absorbing though slightly fell away in final chapter. Highly recommended.