Lady Greenfield posits three types of identity. Those who are “Someone†locate themselves in relation to others, changing and responding as they gain experience. Those who are “Anyone†are characterised by action, not reflection, and have a more rigid caste of mind. Those who are “Nobody†are the hedonistic young, forever receptive to new stimuli but lacking the ability to assign any meaning to them. She fears that we are all becoming Nobodies.
In this nightmare world, the demarcation between individuals will become blurred as biotechnology is used to reshape faces closer to the desired ideal, and electronics obliterates the gap between the real and virtual worlds. Age will have no meaning as the limits on reproductive life are removed through IVF and genetic engineering. We will all look the same, think the same, and behave the same, bouncing unreflectively through life like a pinball in a penny arcade.
If I don’t find this wholly persuasive, it is because I mistrust predictions of the future based on a snapshot of the present. Much of what Lady Greenfield says about reality TV, the decline of a shared culture, and the relative ignorance of the young are common currency among those of us in middle age. But to extrapolate this into despair at the disappearance of human individuality might be to stretch an idea beyond its natural limits.
The best exemplars are the Japanese hikikomori – young men, predominantly, who have withdrawn from society and spend their time locked away in their rooms in symbiosis with a screen. There are said to be a million of them.
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