Has Facebook and your smartphone turned you into a cyborg? #ted #video

Smartphones, social networking and digital technologies are changing how humans interact and evolve with potentially devastating consequences for society, according to Amber Case an anthropologist specialising in digital technologies.

Speaking at a Ted Women lecture published this week, Case suggests that the creation of “second selves” on social networking sites has become a distraction, robbing us of the ability to create real-word identities in favour of developing and maintaining online personalities.

Of course these claims are not new, Donna Haraway examined the effects of technology on human society in the early 1990s, but Case makes the interesting argument that ubiquitous web access and constant social media interaction are have a more profound effect than desktop computers did 20 years ago.

Is she right, could these technologies have unforeseen effects?