Sounds About Right

Baroness Greenfield Sneers at Facebook and Twitter

From the Daily Mail:

Facebook and Twitter have created a generation obsessed with themselves, who have short attention spans and a childlike desire for constant feedback on their lives, a top scientist believes.Repeated exposure to social networking sites leaves users with an ‘identity crisis’, wanting attention in the manner of a toddler saying: ‘Look at me, Mummy, I’ve done this.’

It gets better:

Baroness Greenfield, former director of research body the Royal Institution, said: ‘What concerns me is the banality of so much that goes out on Twitter.

But she’s just warming up:

‘It’s almost as if people are living in a world that’s not a real world, but a world where what counts is what people think of you or (if they) can click on you,’ she said.

‘Think of the implications for society if people worry more about what other people think about them than what they think about themselves.’

Seems reasonable in a “bitching about the internet at a bar” sort of way, and I don’t think blogging is immune from these criticisms (nor is YouTube). But I do have to question the Baroness’s credentials. She was criticized by other scientists for her own brand of self-promotion:

The Professor of Pharmacology at the University of Oxford, who studies disease of the brain, regularly appears on television and is acknowledged by her peers as one of the most talented communicators of science of her generation.

Her unconventional approach to courting publicity, however, has annoyed as many scientists as it attracts, some of whom claim that her talent for self-promotion outweighs her scientific credentials. She has been rejected as a candidate for fellowship of the Royal Society, the elite national academy of science.

And speaking of credentials, how many friends & followers does she have on Facebook & Twitter? Huh? Huh?

‘Nuff said.