FACEBOOK鈥橲 Mark Zuckerberg is king of all he surveys in social media. His next horizon is near-mythical: techno-telepathy. Direct mind-to-mind contact is 鈥渢he ultimate communications technology鈥�, .

鈥淵ou鈥檒l think a text or update and send it,鈥� affirmed his experimental tech director, Regina Dugan. The old Arthur C. Clarke line that 鈥渁ny sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic鈥� seems evergreen in 2017.

Look around your streets 鈥� or better, a mall, lobby or campus 鈥� and you鈥檒l see a generation of humans already deeply entangled in, and entranced by, their communication devices. As the next incessant blink, buzz or chirp pulls you towards the touchscreen yet again, haven鈥檛 you ever felt the urge 鈥� accompanied by a twinge of your carpal tunnel 鈥� to just respond, or receive, in a purely mental way?

Zuckerberg鈥檚 aspiration to go from iPhone to psy-phone seems more like a shift in degree than kind. Yet what Ray Kurzweil once called 鈥渢he age of spiritual machines鈥� sometimes has to deal with the sweaty, fleshy, emotional reality of human beings as they are, particularly younger ones budding through those (so far) unavoidable heaves and surges we know as adolescence and early adulthood.

Going by these two fascinating ethnographies, even the digitally naturalised Generation Z (the kids of Gen X) are hardly ready for the direct and pure mingling of minds. Not while there鈥檚 selfie-taking, sexting, cyberbullying or 鈥淵ik Yakking鈥� to be done, day after day.

Yik Yak 鈥� a controversial Twitter-style app which shut down in April this year 鈥� provides Donna Freitas鈥檚 The Happiness Effect with its malevolent subtitle. Through hundreds of interviews with undergrads and graduates in 13 US colleges, Freitas lays out the regime of nervy identity construction through social media that occupies much of their emotional lives.

鈥淣ervy identity construction via social media occupies much of students鈥� emotional lives鈥�

Whether it鈥檚 due to their awareness that their timeline is a potential CV, or that their 鈥渓ikes鈥� are an indicator of social status on campus, they are under pressure to display their best and most positive selves at all times. 鈥淣ow you don鈥檛 have to wait for your 10-year high school reunion to show off how great your life is,鈥� says junior student Brandy. 鈥淚t鈥檚 like that every day.鈥�

The anonymised Yik Yak app released a torrent of mutual abuse through some of Freitas鈥檚 campuses. Out from under the compulsion to display public happiness, the Repressed returned with a vengeance. 鈥淵ik Yak was like a bad soap opera,鈥� said one. Another abandoned the service 鈥渂ecause I was overwhelmed by the racism and homophobia that exists on my campus鈥�.

So many of the tales here are about trying to establish some kind of autonomy over, or even just etiquette around, the endless connective demands of social media and smartphones. Ethics and mores are being established on the fly. Among Freitas鈥檚 students, the general attitude towards visually led dating apps 鈥� where you display your wares to engage in 鈥渉ook-ups鈥� 鈥� was an extended 鈥渆ewwww鈥�. For these febrile, nervy souls, steamy liaisons still need sociable encounters first.

Consistent with this reserve, the new ritual for courtly romance would seem to be the declaration that one鈥檚 new boy/girlfriend is now 鈥淔acebook official鈥�. When a couple agree to change their relationship status on the platform, they are (in one male student鈥檚 words) 鈥渟tanding on top of a mountain and shouting it out to the world鈥�.

So far, so sweet, so familiar. The ecstasies of online communication are tempered by recognisable real-world (and real-body) anxieties and modesties.

Freitas is obviously a good pastor and counsellor to these fluttery kids, even as she mines them for research. But her matronising tone does remind you that Facebook鈥檚 founding circumstance was as a campus social network, profiting from playing around with the status anxieties of Harvard University students.

The idea that the stifling managerialism behind Zuckerberg鈥檚 network is seeking to enter your intimate mental life, at some stage in the neurotech future, feels like something that would invite neo-Luddism, if not outright rebellion.

One might have a romantic notion 鈥� the agenda-setting SF novels of Cory Doctorow come to mind 鈥� that the kids from the wrong side of the tracks would be the ones who demanded something different, less managed, more edgy, from their communication platforms. (Freitas鈥檚 students are clearly attending prestigious universities, where pressures to succeed keeps things normative.)

Jacqueline Ryan Vickery鈥檚 book Worried About the Wrong Things has a cast of quirky, eccentric and talented young digital users, circulating in and around a working-class school near the Mexican border, with the pseudonym 鈥淔reeway High鈥�. But the tale it tells is how, amid circumstances of socio-economic distress, education fails to be the haven that can generate possibilities and progress. And one predictor of school failure is whether it uses digital technology from a 鈥渉arm-driven鈥� rather than an 鈥渙pportunity-driven鈥� perspective.

The book has an intriguing tension. The author鈥檚 teacherly interests are evident 鈥� she promotes a 鈥渃onnected learning model鈥� that imagines it can bring all the 鈥渓earning moments鈥� of a pupil, wherever and whenever they happen, into one educational framework.

鈥淧etty and futile constraints on classroom tech use sets a tone of defeatism and alienation鈥�

Yet the stories that unfold when she talks to the Freeway High students are pretty difficult to assimilate into any inclusive teaching system. In complete contrast to the compulsive communicators of Freitas鈥檚 book, two sensitive young Latino high-school film-makers (Sergio and Javier) often chose not to post their material on YouTube because they are insecure about its quality, and worried it might harm their career prospects, precarious and tentative as they are.

Freeway High has a classic teacher-liberator of the Dead Poets Society type 鈥� a Mr Lopez who runs evening Cinematic Art Projects and Digital Media Clubs for the pupils. But, as Vickery charts in great and persuasive detail, the school鈥檚 prevailing 鈥渉arm-driven鈥� view of social media muffles and excludes the digital creativity that already thrums through these kids鈥� lives. Petty and futile constraints on classroom tech use, and on the kind of digital material that children can bring in from their own enthusiasms, sets a tone of defeatism and alienation among some of the Freeway High kids.

The author has an obvious favourite pupil, a disruptive, deprived but poetic girl called Selena, with whom she spends considerable time. But she hears later that Selena has dropped out of school in the midst of her college preparations, and now has no connection with her. The book is strewn with tales of exclusion and struggle, in which parental backgrounds are chaotic and the demands of care, commuting and finding a place to live bear down too heavily on digitally ambitious youth.

Across both studies, and no matter the social positioning of each set of users, these young people evidently know they have a new kind of tangible social machinery in their hands (and minds): a machinery made of devices, networks and digital information, with which they can make a mark, pooling their knowledge and consciousness.

As responsible pedagogues, Vickery and Freitas are institutionalised (and institutionalising). And with Mark Zuckerberg 鈥� as with any Silicon Valley visionary mogul 鈥� you have to follow the profit-driven interest, not just gawp at the transhuman ambition.

Somewhere between the caring educators and the corporate disruptor, Generation Z is forging its own new society out of a digital revolution still in its early days. The streets will have their uses. And young, yearning bodies won鈥檛 be ignored, either.

Donna Freitas
Oxford University Press

Jacqueline Ryan Vickery
MIT Press

This article appeared in print under the headline 鈥淏est behaviour?鈥�

Plonk a set of smart glasses or a virtual-reality helmet before the philosopher Plato, and after his fastidious recoil there would be a moment of self-righteousness: 鈥淚 told you so.鈥�

Plato鈥檚 鈥濃�� has its inhabitants chained up and gazing at a stony wall. Over it flicker shadows that they take for reality. As we plug in, turn on and zone out with our current repertoire of virtuality-generating devices, we will find it worth musing over the challenge that Plato poses: do wisdom-lovers break those chains, as he suggests, and leave the cave to seek reality? Or do they stay put, finally face down the old misery-guts super-rationalist, and assert that this new layer of simulated experience is as natural to humans as play or art?

Simulation already draws on mythology. The much-heralded platform 鈥� which sees reality 鈥渁ugmented鈥� as you look upon it, rather than entirely simulated like in a video game 鈥� sends household robot-gods scurrying around under tables and schools of whales undulating across the ceiling. Other human beings can be mapped in your augmented eyesight and rendered as cultural icons, creatures, objects, or aliens. An entirely new popular-culture storm is gathering here; last year鈥檚 Pok茅mon Go phenomenon was the merest flurry.

Gameful world

Still, it鈥檚 good to keep Plato鈥檚 admonitions about delusion and illusion in mind. We have come through a decade in which general enthusiasm for a 鈥済ameful world鈥� (as theorist Jane McGonigal might put it) held out the hope of new forms of education and work. A generation of managers asked: look at all the free labour people do in World of Warcraft, Minecraft and No Man鈥檚 Sky. Can鈥檛 we 鈥済amify鈥� our endeavour or enterprise to elicit a similar kind of commitment? Not just for profit, but for social good, for mental health?

This agenda has progressed somewhat into the mainstream. In the current series of House of Cards, Frank Underwood鈥檚 presidential challenger 鈥� the damaged military hero Will Conway 鈥� uses a war-gaming VR headset as therapy for his post-traumatic stress disorder.

Yet the 鈥渟erious games鈥� movement (which has in July at George Mason University in Manassas, Virginia) can rarely overcome the oldest truth about any human engagement with games, play or mimicry 鈥� that being able to freely chose to play the game, beyond utility or coercion, is the very point of it.

Freedom to play

This freedom to play is not just a rabbit hole into which one鈥檚 attention disappears. The link between freedom and play could perhaps be preserved in a 鈥渟erious鈥� game if the political stakes were high enough. Some regard virtual-world creation as a tool, as yet barely wielded, for reordering society. In his recent book , Paul Mason wonders why we have 鈥渘o models that capture economic complexity, in the way computers are used to simulate weather, population, epidemics or traffic flows鈥�.

Mason鈥檚 simulations would be 鈥渁gent-based鈥� and unpredictable: you create a million digital people with digital resources and needs, set them loose in a synthetic world, and are informed and illuminated by what emerges.

The assumption is that economics needs to be much better at anticipating major surprises and crises that arise from messily motivated 鈥� rather than rationally maximising 鈥� human beings. Synthetic worlds, with their increasingly daunting simulation power, can set those hares running.

Rehearsal for reality

So virtuality could indeed rehearse you for the complexity of the real world, not just act as an escape from it. The optimism of the current wave of AI pioneers, such as Google鈥檚 DeepMind, is that their learning machines can be the great assistants of 鈥� not grim replacements for 鈥� human ambition, vision and will.

Our modern Plato should put on his techno-specs and walk out of the cave. He would still see a real world worth grasping and shaping, but one informed by the simulations and augmentations dancing before his eyes. Will we need new philosophies and philosophers to cope with our permanently virtual condition? Well, one might argue that鈥檚 all they鈥檝e ever done.

AS THE daily turbulence of politics, economics, environmental change and religion rages around us, there is an understandable marketplace for books that look at the bigger picture. Jeremy Lent鈥檚 The Patterning Instinct does just that, joining the dots between points in history and culture, identifying echoes and consiliences across the natural and social sciences.

This is more than a scholastic exercise. Our planetary predicament demands the broadest and deepest perspectives, not just to enable masterful armchair contemplation, but also to guide our actions in the middle of what would otherwise be an enervating horror show.

The cover of Lent鈥檚 intellectual epic shows a line drawing of networks, the dots ostentatiously joined. No doubt this expresses the author鈥檚 fundamentalism, derived from his scientific and religious readings, about the power of connectedness.

But on the way to a somewhat familiar end point, Lent provides a useful and massively referenced road map of the most enduring structures of meaning in human history.

Humanity鈥檚 first world-encompassing idea, says Lent, was the hunter-gatherer belief that 鈥渆verything is connected鈥�. There followed an agricultural era during which humanity lived under the 鈥渉ierarchy of the gods鈥�. He then charts what he calls 鈥渢he divergence鈥�.

Lent鈥檚 shorthand for this pattern is 鈥渟plit cosmos, split human鈥�: the assumption that our physical reality, personal or objective, can be controlled by transcendent powers. Whether we call those powers 鈥渄ivine鈥� or 鈥渞ational鈥� is, to Lent, neither here nor there. The two developed in lockstep: you couldn鈥檛 have conceived one without the other.

Articulated first by the philosophers of Ancient Greece, this 鈥淲estern pattern鈥� of meaning gathered force under the rise of Christianity and the innovations of the Enlightenment and continues to hold sway under today鈥檚 scientific industrialism.

鈥淭his idea could produce a split humanity, one species enhanced and exploring, the other barely surviving鈥�

Lent traces his splitting thesis all the way to the thrumming fortresses of Silicon Valley. Here, Plato鈥檚 fantasy 鈥� a rational soul subjecting the animalistic body to its will 鈥� is not just a moral compass, it鈥檚 become techno-scientific mission.

Are you extending our cognitive abilities by creating devices that mimic and mesh with our thinking? Are you influencing people鈥檚 emotions through mood-altering drugs? Are you engineering our bodies to the optimum with gene editing? Then you are in the grip of an ancient idea: that pure rationality stands sovereign over the biological world.

This idea has the potential, already half-realised, Lent says, to produce a split humanity, 鈥渙ne species, genetically and technologically enhanced, exploring entirely new ways of being human; the other species, genetically akin to us, barely surviving within its collapsed infrastructure.鈥�

Similar to Yuval Noah Harari鈥檚 recent, and equally expansive, Homo Deus, Lent鈥檚 book seeks some perspective on our modern juggernaut of radical innovation and global polarisation. To do so, it reaches towards Asian wisdom traditions 鈥� an 鈥淓astern pattern鈥� that Lent calls 鈥渢he harmonic web of life鈥�.

But while Harari鈥檚 no-self Buddhism comes close to exulting in the way humankind will be overtaken by intelligent algorithms, Lent finds a place for connecting, meaning-seeking humans in this complex future.

To carve out this space for ourselves, Lent says we must recast the deep metaphors structuring our attitudes to nature and other humans.

Neo-Confucianism is the candidate that Lent favours to lead this metaphorical revolution. Its core concept is an understanding of the universe as the interrelation of qi (spoken as 鈥渃hi鈥�) and li. Qi is the raw material of the universe 鈥� but li is 鈥渢he ever-moving, ever-present set of patterns that flow through everything in nature and in all our perceptions of the world, including our consciousness鈥�.

Like his mentor Fritjof Capra, who provides an introduction for the book, Lent seeks corroboration for this spiritual insight in what were once called the 鈥渘ew鈥�, non-deterministic sciences 鈥� the study of complex adaptive systems in physics and biology, which find curious analogues in certain branches of mathematics.

Lent shows how the tenets of Neo-Confucian thought are homologous with maths, neuroscience and climatology, particularly when those disciplines identify 鈥渁 complex of dynamical systems that remain valid across the entire natural world, from systems as vast as global climate to as small as a living cell鈥�.

Like Capra, Lent wants to fuse spiritual tradition and the 鈥渘ew鈥� sciences in service of a less rapacious and divisive world. If we could grasp what Lent calls elsewhere 鈥渓iology鈥�, we would attribute our ultimate sources of value not to 鈥渁 transcendent realm鈥�, or to our 鈥渕oral rationality鈥�, but to 鈥渉umanity鈥檚 intrinsic connection with the natural world鈥�.

There鈥檚 an obvious, real-world refutation available, of course. It鈥檚 not hard to find a regime that loudly deploys Confucian values in a modern setting. But does China, which recorded its highest ever figures for coal-fired electricity this April, provide the best exemplar? Lent himself delicately 鈥渞efrains from making direct inferences regarding modern China鈥� in his study of Neo-Confucianism. He should entertain a little more hope. Although China is producing more energy from coal in absolute terms, .

Since 2007, Beijing elites have been hyping East Asia as a land mass uniquely placed to bring about an 鈥渆cological civilisation鈥�, underpinned by the Confucian belief in harmony with nature. Meanwhile the administrations of US president Donald Trump and UK prime minister Theresa May have each rubbished climate change action and research. They have handed China a golden opportunity: to make good on its soft-power rhetoric and create a sustainable model that, sooner or later, the rest of the world will have to emulate.

Lent uses what he calls 鈥渃ognitive history鈥� and 鈥渁rchaeology of the mind鈥� to show how such massive shifts in underlying world view can happen, and they involve an evolutionary account of the brain. Again like Harari, Lent dates the advent of our capacity for advanced cognition to a point about 70,000 years ago, when our prefrontal cortex began to expand.

Lent describes the 鈥渆xecutive function鈥� of the prefrontal cortex well. 鈥淚t mediates our ability to plan, conceptualise, symbolise, make rules, and impose meaning on things. It controls our physiological drives and turns our basic feelings into complex emotions. It enables us to be aware of ourselves and others as separate beings, and to turn the past and the future into one narrative.鈥� This is the locus of the 鈥減atterning instinct鈥�.

In many of the neurology-informed history epics, authors are often studiedly neutral about the raw mental ability of humans to forge new paradigms. Few of them dare to connect our cognitive flexibility to any necessary idea of progress, or human flourishing. This is perhaps understandable given what鈥檚 involved is often a survey of historical carnage. Lent himself is unsparing in his descriptions of the cruelty and brutality meted out by righteous monotheists and dualists, their meaning-patterns justifying colonialism and empire.

鈥淐ultures shape values, and those values shape history. Our values will shape our future鈥�

Given all this, you have to admire the way Lent sticks his neck out on behalf of Neo-Confucianism. He goes so far as to propose that its concept of 鈥渉eart-mind鈥�, which seeks to integrate emotion and reason, is analogous to the prefrontal cortex when it functions at its best. And he has a point, citing research that shows that a healthy prefrontal cortex is not about 鈥渞epressing or overriding emotional states鈥�, but about 鈥渋ntegrating them into appropriate decisions and actions鈥� our cognition takes place not in the brain but in the felt sensation of the entire body.鈥�

The Patterning Instinct, oblivious to the science-deniers currently occupying high executive office, ends with a statement of simple confidence: 鈥淐ultures shape values, and those values shape history. By the same token, our values will shape our future.鈥� One way to equip yourself for this heroic task will be to read this enormous, learned, yet garrulous and helpful book.

This article appeared in print under the headline 鈥淢ind is where the heart is鈥�

THE cover of this book echoes its core anxiety. A giant foot presses down on a sullen, Michael Jackson-like figure 鈥� a besuited citizen coolly holding off its massive weight. This is a sinister image to associate with a volume (and its author, Cass Sunstein) that should be able to proclaim a decade of success in the government鈥檚 use of 鈥渂ehavioural science鈥�, or nudge theory. But doubts are brewing about its long-term effectiveness in changing public behaviour 鈥� as well as about its selective account of evolved human nature.

Nudging has had a strong and illustrious run at the highest level. Outgoing US President Barack Obama and former UK Prime Minister David Cameron both set up behavioural science units at the heart of their administrations (Sunstein was the administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs from 2009 to 2012).

Sunstein insists that the powers that be cannot avoid nudging us. Every shop floor plan, every new office design, every commercial marketing campaign, every public information campaign, is an 鈥渁rchitecting of choices鈥�. As anyone who ever tried to leave IKEA quickly will suspect, that endless, furniture-strewn path to the exit is no accident.

Nudges 鈥渟teer people in particular directions, but also allow them to go their own way鈥�. They are entreaties to change our habits, to accept old or new norms, but they presume thatwe are ultimately free to refuse the request.

However, our freedom is easily constrained by 鈥渃ognitive biases鈥�. Our brains, say the nudgers, are lazy, energy-conserving mechanisms, often overwhelmed by information. So a good way to ensure that people pay into their pensions, for example, is to set payment as a 鈥渄efault鈥� in employment contracts, so the employee has to actively untick the box. Defaults of all kinds exploit our preference for inertia and the status quo in order to increase future security.

鈥淓ver tried to leave IKEA quickly? That endless, furniture-strewn path to the exit is no accident鈥�

These, and other limits to our 鈥渃ognitive operations鈥� 鈥� like 鈥減resent bias鈥�, where we focus on the short term and downplay the future, or our 鈥渦nrealistic optimism鈥� about our prospects, or our poor assessment of probable outcomes are fully deployed in 厂耻苍蝉迟别颈苍鈥檚 argument

What critics nearly a decade ago were dubbing 厂耻苍蝉迟别颈苍鈥檚 鈥淗omer Economicus鈥� view of human nature (named after Homer Simpson and his notoriously defensive response to the challenges of life in Springfield) stands untouched.

厂耻苍蝉迟别颈苍鈥檚 Nudge (with Richard Thaler) was published in 2008, and the thinking behind it, while gaining quick traction, has barely progressed. The book is still largely predicated on data from research on American college kids. It is an expedient rationale for governing mandarins, giving them a guilt-free alibi for their 鈥渓iberal paternalism鈥�.

pointed out that Obama鈥檚 enthusiasm for nudging was, in the circumstances, perfectly understandable. Beating back the financial crisis of 2007鈥�2008, and facing an antagonistic Congress, the question was 鈥渉ow to use executive action to salvage something positive in the face of a hopeless political situation鈥�?

Nudges could change public behaviour without having to get a majority on the Floor. 鈥淭his is not exactly what the candidate of hope and change had in mind by 鈥榟ope and change鈥�, 鈥� writes David V. Johnson, 鈥渂ut it would have to do.鈥�

Sunstein makes useful distinctions between nudges and the other things governments and enterprises can do. Nudges are not 鈥渕andates鈥� (laws, regulations, punishments). A mandate would be, for example, a rigorous and well-administered carbon tax, secured through a democratic or representative process. A 鈥渘udge鈥� puts smiley faces on your energy bill, and compares your usage to that of the eco-efficient Joneses next door (nudgers like to game our herd-like social impulses).

In a fascinating survey section, which asks Americans and others what they actually think about being the subjects of the 鈥渁rchitecting鈥� of their choices, Sunstein discovers that 鈥渋f people are told that they are being nudged, they will react adversely and resist鈥�.

This is why nudge thinking may be faltering 鈥� its understanding of human nature unnecessarily (and perhaps expediently) downgrades our powers of conscious thought.

From the psychology and neuroscience around play, creativity, dreaming and sleep, we can as easily derive a picture of human cognition that doesn鈥檛 recoil from the buzzing, blooming demands of everyday life, but exults in using imagination, stories, abstraction and metaphor to comprehend the world.

Can we architect a society that supports our cognitive surpluses, rather than exploiting our cognitive limits? If 鈥渁ttention is a scarce resource鈥�, as Sunstein writes, perhaps we might manage the coming march of automation a different way, by using it to reduce our overall working hours? This would then increase the zone in which our attention could be freely and creatively exercised.

That rebellious, rock-star figure on the cover is entirely appropriate. The ethics of human creativity, and the structural conditions which support its flourishing, may prove to be the ultimate challenge to the nudgers.

This article appeared in print under the headline 鈥淧laying politics鈥�