We reside in a world inconceivable only decades ago: a domain of backlit screens, instantaneous info, and vibrant experiences that can outcompete bleak truth. Our brave brand-new innovations use amazing chances for work and play. But at what cost? Now renowned neuroscientist Susan Greenfield– known in the United Kingdom for challenging entrenched traditional views– brings together a range of scientific studies, news events, and cultural criticism to create an incisive photo of “the global now.” Disputing the assumption that our technologies are harmless tools, Greenfield checks out whether incessant exposure to social media websites, search engines, and videogames can rewiring our brains, and whether the minds of people born prior to and after the development of the Web vary. Stressing the effect on Digital Natives– those who have actually never understood a world without the Web– Greenfield exposes how neuronal networking might be affected by extraordinary bombardments of audiovisual stimuli, how video gaming can form a chemical landscape in the brain similar to that in gambling addicts, how surfing the Net risks positioning a premium on information rather than on deep knowledge and understanding, and how extreme use of social networking websites restricts the maturation of compassion and identity. But Mind Modification also looks into the potential benefits of our digital way of life. Sorting through the cocktail of not just hazard but opportunity these innovations manage, Greenfield checks out how gaming enhances vision and motor control, how touch tablets aid students with developmental specials needs, and how political “clicktivism” foments favorable change. In a world where adults spend 10 hours a day online, and where tablets are the typical means by which children discover and play, Mind Modification reveals as never ever prior to the complex physiological, social, and cultural ramifications of living in the digital age. A book that will be to the Internet what An Inconvenient Fact was to international warming, Mind Change is provocative, disconcerting, and a call to action to guarantee a future in which innovation cultivates– not frustrates– deep thinking, imagination, and real fulfillment. Praise for Mind Change “Greenfield’s application of the mismatch between human and maker to the brain presents an important variation on this prevalent view of innovation … She has an unusual talent for discussing science in available prose.”– The Washington Post “Greenfield’s focus is on bringing to light the ramifications of Internet-induced ‘mind change’– as comparably multifaceted as the issue of climate change, she argues, and just as crucial.”– Chicago Tribune “Mind Change is extremely well arranged and strikes the right balance between scholastic and provocative.”– Booklist “[A] difficult, promoting viewpoint from an informed neuroscientist on a complex, fast-moving, extremely substantial field.”– Kirkus Reviews “[Greenfield] is not just an interesting communicator however a thoughtful, accountable scientist, and the arguments she makes are well-supported and persuasive.”– Mail on Sunday “Greenfield’s exceptional goal to prove an empirical basis for conversation is … an essential one.”– Financial Times “An important discussion of an uneasy minority position.”– Jaron Lanier, Nature From the Hardbound edition.
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