It doesn’t actually exist yet, but it’s only a matter of time.

Following her recent article about the potential neurological dangers of the newly announced “Facebook phone”, it’s becoming increasingly likely that any new technological development will eventually have an article about it in which Susan Greenfield predicts the serious damage it could do to people’s brains.

Overlooking the fact that the recent article reads like it was written by someone whose understanding of Facebook and smartphones is based exclusively on an overheard conversation between two drunken advertising executives in a pub, Greenfield tends to stick to a reliable and predictable formula.

Technological advances usually focus on making things faster, slicker and more efficient. So, should you need a Greenfield-esque article about the latest technological announcement to make your needless paranoia-inducing agenda seem more scientific/credible, there’s no need to wait until the Baroness herself can fit you into her schedule. Now you can write your own by following this simple step-by-step guide.

I feel a bit bad piling on, as she gets lots of very critical press already (one example: “Greenfield’s hypothesis is that an unquantified level of exposure to an unspecified subset of modern technologies may be affecting an indeterminate number of people’s brains in an undefined way, with a number of results”). I think she’s raising the right questions, and she means well, but she should– and I’m absolutely sure could– raise her game above the “brains change :: technology changes :: technology changes brains” line of argument.

I think the basic idea is not that controversial, if only because EVERYTHING “changes the brain” in some way. As I’ve said before, neuroplasticity is not another word for technological determinism. If the observation that technology affects the brain is true, it’s just as true that once we recognize those changes, we can work to reverse them– or to make other changes to suit us.

And she’s been talking about this issue, in largely the same way, since at least 2005. By now there have to be some ways of testing the changes she thinks are happening. Maybe the portable EEG machines used up in Edinburgh can be sent down to Oxford?