We are all cyborgs now — not in the science-fiction sense of implanted circuits, but in the genuine functional sense that our tools have become extensions of memory, identity, and thought. Our phones carry our contacts, our schedules, our navigation. They hold the record of our relationships. Leave your phone at home and you feel, genuinely, that a part of your mind has been left behind.
This talk explores what it means to live with a second self — a digital identity that exists in parallel with our physical one. The digital self requires maintenance, updates, and emotional energy. Unlike our physical selves, which evolved over hundreds of thousands of years, our digital selves are only a decade or two old. We are only beginning to understand the burden of managing them.
What does this mean for design? If our tools are truly extensions of ourselves, then designing them poorly is not just an inconvenience — it is a form of harm. The way we design our tools is the way we design ourselves.
Delivered at TEDWomen, December 2010. Viewed over two million times.