A very interstingly starting but rather blurry book about the role of identity and personality in the near future. Interesting questions but sometimesI don't see the whole meaning of it rather than (sorry but) fear from the unkown.... ( )

This is a highly speculative but very stimulating book. Greenfield draws on her neuroscientific background to argue that modern technology and the social changes it's driving are reshaping our brains and hence our identities as individual human beings. She explores human identity through four over-arching personas, which she freely admits are caricatures: Someone, Anyone, Nobody, and Eureka. Very briefly, Someone is characterised by status and relations with others, Anyone by actions and prescribed patterns of living within a particular ideology, Nobody by an emphasis on sensation and raw feelings rather than cognition, and Eureka by creativity. These personas not only operate at the level of the individual, but also at the level of society, with history, particularly Western history, a struggle between Someone and Anyone, punctuated by brief periods of Eureka, such as 5th century Athens.Greenfield argues that Someone offers individuality, Anyone fulfilment, Nobody neither fulfilment nor individuality, and only Eureka both fulfilment and individuality. However, the rapid development of info-, bio-, and nano-technologies in the 21st century are pushing identity towards the Nobody scenario because they "will have obliterated the traditional means of individual demarcation, from the familiar firewall of the physical body and brain to our notions of external 'reality', to third-party access to our innermost body processes, to homegenization of generations through homogenized health, appearance and reproductive potential, to a blurring of the daily narrative of work and leisure." The result will be a life of greater comfort and more fun, but less meaning.Greenfield cites a range of fascinating ideas and research for her thesis. She doesn't argue that one persona (Eureka) is to be preferred, or that the other personas are bad, but that society has never had the understanding or tools to get the balance right at either the level of the individual or the level of society. Her theory is very speculative, and she doesn't quite pull it all together for me at the end, but what I liked about this book was the sense of a very smart person thinking aloud about society from a scientific perspective. Having just returned to normal society after six months of mostly solitary walking, I'm struggling to articulate the changes I've observed in myself, and a move away from Nobody towards a mix of Someone, Anyone, and Eureka is proving to be a very useful framework. Definitely going to reread this one. ( )