Kathleen Taylor

One obvious change to our environments which (unlike sensory deprivation experiments) has the power to affect a large number of people simultaneously is the growth of mass media such as televison and the Internet. These technologies are applications of physics that have had a huge impact on modern life. In her book 'Tomorrow's People' brain scientist Susan Greenfield speculates that the further development of mass media technologies into the realm of sophisticated virtual reality could create increasingly infantilized, stimulus-driven, and asocial consumers whose every need is anticipated and provided by endlessly watchful information technologies. Change the world, Greenfield argues, and you change the selves that live in it. The change we in the rich West are contemplating could fondamentally alter human nature.