Is technology to blame?

Submitted by AWL on 2 December, 2014 - 5:28 Author: Bruce Robinson

In her claims that exposure to Facebook is the cause of changes to the brain and thus at the root of a range of behavioural and social problems, Susan Greenfield adopts positions that regularly reappear as science and technology develop (discussed in Solidarity 342 and 343).

There is a tendency to blame new technologies for whatever social worries happen to be top of the agenda of social conservatives. Greenfield contrasts internet use with watching television in a group, perhaps forgetting that fifty years ago excessive television watching was being blamed for similar problems to those she attributes to the internet.

Of course, anything excessive can harm — by definition. And it is doubtless true that using technology, whether computers or TV, as a substitute for social interaction can affect children’s development.

But many of the ills which Greenfield ascribes to the internet have other causes which are directly products of social change.

The growth of individualism precedes the internet — remember the supposed “Me Generation” of the 70s? — and has clear roots in the decline in many collective institutions and the dominance in neo-liberalism of an ideology that undermines social solidarity and emphasises individual solutions to problems, often through competition and self-assertion.

Increasing demands on attention, which may or may not lead to a shorter attention span, have followed not just from a vast increase in easily accessible information but also from a speed-up in the rhythms of everyday life which has its roots in the demands of capital.

If it has any real point beyond a vague correlation of different phenomena happening at the same time, Greenfield’s explanation must be that changes in brain structure have a direct effect in producing these forms of behaviour. This is to ignore that both individual psychology and societies have their own distinct role in explaining behaviour that are not reducible to brain functioning or other physical systems.

This type of reductionist explanation becomes more frequent when disciplines such as neuroscience or genetics make major steps forward. Some scientists then “imperialistically” extend the range of their claims beyond the realm within which their discoveries are valid. Greenfield seems even to lack much scientific grounds for her claim.

The left should combine a scepticism about theories that explain social problems in physical terms with a respect for real scientific advances.

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