TED Video: We Are All Cyborgs Now

Living without digital devices such as cellphones and computers is becoming impossible for many people these days. We can see numerous people who are sending Kakao Talk messages to their freinds, doing internet surfing and talking with their friends over cellphone while walking through the streets. Due to the development of technology, now all of us can communicate with anyone around the world whenever we want to. And Amber Case, who does a presentation in this video, calls all of us 'cyborgs'.

Her picture from the TED.com

Actually, Amber Case is the 'cyborg anthropologist' and she studies the interaction amongst human beings and technology in our daily lives. She believes that we, the Homo Sapiens, are so curious that we want to add something on our bodies and discover everything. As the result, we are eventually becoming very different form of Homo Sapiens compared to our ancestors. We do not try to develop our physical selves anymore, as Case said. We do not try to learn how to run faster, make strong tools and protect ourselves from the attack of wild animals. Those things became old-fashioned. Instead, we are trying to communicate easier, know about the recent news faster and improve our 'mental selves'. The goals are making us 'cyborgs'.

Therefore, now, all of us have the chance to get our 'second selves'. 'Second selves' are our another selves who appear on the internet.  Other people can interact with our second selves using Facebook, Twitter, E-mail and blogs even when we are not staring at the monitor. What we need to do is just maintaining our second selves and checking the messages and E mails frequently. Also, Case says that we can interact immediately with our friends using the 'warmholes in our pocket' -i phones, blackberries, and so on- . Let me explain the reason why she portrays cellphones as 'warmholes'. According to the encyclopedia,  'wormholes'  exist in the universe. You can reach to a far away place immediately if you pass a wormhole. Likewise, A and B can be connected immediately if they talk over cellphones.  We don't need to go to far away countries or cities to meet our fellows and spend precious time and energy anymore. What's more, we can put a lot of information, pictures and documents in our digital devices and they never get heavier.

However, the development of technology and digital devices is also causing some problems. As I mentioned, the digital devices can store numerous stuffs such as photos, videos and documents. Moreover, if you are internet users, you can post everything you want.
They're really convenient, aren't they?  Meanwhile, since we put too many stuffs in our digital devices, we sometimes can not find what we have saved in them long time ago.  In that situation, we say, "Oh. no! where is the document I have saved years ago?' and start to find it(however, in many cases, we can't).  Case explains that this phenomenon is called 'panic architecture' Also, she portrays us as 'paleontologists' who always dig the ground to find the old things.

In fact, the biggest problem caused by the digital devices is that we do not have enough time to do 'self reflection'. We, as human beings, sometimes need to reflect on ourselves and check whether or not we are on the right track to achieve our goals. However, nowadays, we are too busy to do self-reflection because we are engrossed in using digital devices. The cyborgs need to check all the Kakao Talk messages from our families and fellows, put efforts to maitain our second selves, upload some posts on Facebook, play computer games and talk with our friends over cellphones. We do not have enough time to ponder about our future, our goals and ourselves.

Then what should we do? When it comes to my take, I believe that we should not let the digital devices control us. We should change our attitudes. Of course, our lives will be pretty difficult without the digital devices. It may be so annoying if we should go to the far away countries and towns to meet our friends. It may be so inconvenient if we should carry all the heavy documents, pictures and other stuffs that we used to save in our USBs. So, we should learn how to control ourselves. We should plan our daily schedules and decide what to do first and what to do later on.  If so, the problems like 'lacking of self reflection' will not occur anymore.

As cyborgs who can hardly live without computers and cellphones, we should concede that they are very useful and practical. However, we should not look on only the bright side of using digital devices. It can cause huge social problems, also. In fact, the problems caused by the digital devices are taking place right now, as well. Many people are suffering from the worldwide problems such as hacking and cyber bullying these days. But the good news is that we can prevent the problems if we put some efforts. So, now, it is your choice to decide whether or not to control yourselves. What will you do?