Technology-prompted Crisis in the 22nd Century – Susan Greenfield’s 2121 – A Tale from the Next Century

• Published in: Cultural perspectives no. 26; pp. 183 - 206
• Main Authors: Suciu, Andreia Irina, Culea, Mihaela
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Alma Mater Publishing House 2021; Editura Alma Mater
• Subjects: British Literature; Fiction; Identity of Collectives; Language and Literature Studies; Literary Texts; Neuropsychology; Novel; Psychology of Self; Social psychology and group interaction; Sociology; Studies of Literature; loss; technology; crisis; identity; past–present–future
• ISSN: 1224-239X; 2559-3439

The article focuses on an envisaged crisis of humanity in one hundred years’ time, as it is presented in the novel 2121 (2013) by English neuroscientist and writer Susan Greenfield. Greenfield transfers her scientific expertise and pours into the mould of a dystopian view of the future her knowledge of the way in which technology has already, and will, potentially, change people’s brains and the entire course of mankind. The novel, having received mixed reviews, is a “translation”, a transfer or a carrying forward into (the world and language of) fiction of her studies and convictions from her scientific research. The article explores the depicted crisis caused mainly by the excessive and irrational use of technology, with its consequences at individual and collective levels and various types of associated loss and impairment connected to the imagined crisis: loss of measure, loss of control, loss of emotion, loss of the ability to interconnect, loss of environmental equilibrium and connection with nature, loss of purpose, loss of the ability to form mental processes and, subsequently, loss of a sense of identity.