The Body Digital (EBK)
  • Published: 9 December 2025
  • ISBN: 9781685891978
  • Imprint: Melville House
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 256
  • RRP: $45.00

The Body Digital (EBK)

A Brief History of Humans and Machines from Cuckoo Clocks to ChatGPT

  • Vanessa Chang
Formats & editions
EBook
4 Nov 2025
Paperback
9 Dec 2025
Pre-order from…
Amazon Booktopia Dymocks QBD Readings Your Bookstore Abbeys Boomerang Find local retailers Find local retailers Collins Fishpond Gleebooks Harry Hartog Kinokuniya Robinsons The Nile Mighty Ape

A dazzling tour of the history of technology and its complex relationship to the  human body—from a Silicon Valley expert and scholar of technology

A dazzling tour of the history of technology and its complex relationship to the human body

What is the relationship between our bodies and our senses and technology? In today's world of blinding technological change, of artificial intelligence and deepfakes and Chat GPT, it is easy to forget that we have always had complicated relations with technology—whether that technology is computers, player pianos, and even eyeglasses.

In this wide-ranging and fascinating study, Vanessa Chang takes us on a historical tour of the interactions between our bodies and machines, showing that the advent of new technologies has always been met with varied reactions, from misplaced fear to tragic over-optimism. The result is cultural critique of the highest order and a profound demonstration of the eternal truth that in order to understand the future, we must look to the past.
  • Published: 9 December 2025
  • ISBN: 9781685891978
  • Imprint: Melville House
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 256
  • RRP: $45.00
Categories:

Praise for The Body Digital (EBK)

"The Body Digital offers a rich and poetic set of insights that suggest our technologies are intimately bound up in a profound desire to connect with each other and with the sensuous world around us." —Kat Mustatea, author of Voidopolis and Bodymouth

"The Body Digital is a propulsive read that sheds new light on everything from automata through AI, vinyl through fiction. Anyone who feels worried about what AI might mean for human life will want to pick this book up." —Jennifer L. Lieberman, author of Power Lines: Electricity in American Life

"What does it mean for bodies and machines to co-evolve? Vanessa Chang’s marvelous meditation on this question will tune your senses to patterns of technological change generations in the making. Lyrical, rigorous, intellectually omnivorous." —Fred Turner, Harry and Norman Chandler Professor of Communication, Stanford University

"The Body Digital offers a rich and poetic set of insights that suggest our technologies are intimately bound up in a profound desire to connect with each other and with the sensuous world around us." —Kat Mustatea, author of Voidopolis

"The Body Digital delivers a powerful and much-needed counter-narrative to the myth of a disembodied digital existence ... wonderfully accessible yet intellectually rigorous." —DJ Spooky (Paul D. Miller)

"A beautifully fresh synthesis ... provocative contemporary critique that helps us see our bodies and our tech with fresh eyes." —Sara Hendren, author of What Can a Body Do?

"The Body Digital is a propulsive read that sheds new light on everything from automata through AI, vinyl through fiction. Anyone who feels worried about what AI might mean for human life will want to pick this book up." —Jennifer L. Lieberman, author of Power Lines: Electricity in American Life

"What does it mean for bodies and machines to co-evolve? Vanessa Chang’s marvelous meditation on this question will tune your senses to patterns of technological change generations in the making. Lyrical, rigorous, intellectually omnivorous." —Fred Turner, Harry and Norman Chandler Professor of Communication, Stanford University