Introduced by Conor: “We Are Not Horses. We Are Humans and Humans Are…”
By Vanessa Chang, the director of programs at Leonardo, the International Society for the Arts, Sciences, and Technology. Her essays and reviews have appeared in publications like Slate, Noema, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and Wired. This excerpt is adapted from her book The Body Digital: A History of Humans and Machines from Cuckoo Clocks to ChatGPT (2025, Melville House), originally produced for the Observatory by the Independent Media Institute.
The renowned computer scientist Mark Weiser once stated, “a good tool is an invisible tool.” By this measure, many of our digital tools have successfully become seamless extensions of ourselves; they liberate us by becoming inconspicuous. Technologies like gesture control, voice recognition, and eye tracking strive to align our physical expressions with our virtual personas.
This seamless interaction has long been a quest for designers. From gaming consoles like the Wii to devices such as Leap Motion, today’s gadgets aim to dissolve the divisions between our physical selves and our information. Promising a world where our tools are so intuitive they become unnoticeable, that vision seems to have materialized.
Though these technologies fade from our conscious awareness, they profoundly shape our existence. They are not mere tools; they are frameworks that structure our physical and temporal realities, defining what I refer to as the “digital body.” This concept encapsulates how we feel, act, and evolve alongside technology. The digital body is tangible—not an abstraction, but a representation of our evolving relationship with our tools and environments.
In an age dominated by smartphones and artificial intelligence, it’s easy to feel adrift in unfamiliar territory. Our tools have become so effortless and unobtrusive that we lose sight of their historical context. Long before algorithms and touchscreens, innovations like writing, musical instruments, and roads transformed human existence. These pioneering technologies instigated fundamental shifts in interpersonal interaction, our engagement with the environment, and ultimately, our way of life.
With personalized technologies increasingly influencing our daily lives, important questions arise: How did we arrive at this juncture? What kinds of bodies do our technologies necessitate, alter, or erase? What implications arise when the physical becomes interface? And how can we recalibrate our trajectory?
Our interactions with technology reveal a complex interplay—a theater of skin, bone, information, rhythm, and power. Technologies refine and orchestrate our behaviors, introducing novel modes of being, feeling, moving, and knowing.
Hands
Often seen as the original interface, our hands extend our consciousness into the environment—what cartoonist Lynda Barry calls “the original digital device.”
Researchers across disciplines have emphasized the evolutionary synergy between hand and mind. Our hands mediate our brain’s most intricate interactions with technology while being shaped by an ongoing relationship with our surrounding tools. Writing, as our earliest technology for information storage and retrieval, epitomizes this interaction.
Hands are intelligent, inquisitive, and capable of learning.
Despite their significant role in advancing technology—and our physicality—there have been numerous attempts to automate our reliance on the human hand.
Automata, early robotic forms designed to mimic human action, have existed for over a thousand years. Many of these machines aspired to replicate the unique performances of the hand, yet they fell short of matching its intelligence.
How do bodies translate into information? In 1804, French inventor Joseph-Marie Jacquard created a different automaton intended to emulate the skilled human hand. The Jacquard machine often serves as a precursor in modern computing history. Attached to a handloom, it automates the creation of intricately designed fabric—actually replacing the artisan’s hand by converting human skills into programmable code, marking the advent of numerical control machines.
A 1951 advertisement for IBM’s Type 604 Electronic Calculating Punch showcased a radiant human hand paired with its mechanical counterpart: vacuum tube modules mimicking fingers. The tagline read, “Fingers You Can Count On.” This imagery not only represented a sales strategy but also symbolized a significant transition: the intelligent hand, once synonymous with craftsmanship, now viewed as a modular, electronic component—human labor reshaped into interchangeable parts.
Yet, history reminds us of the hand’s enduring creativity. By focusing on designing tools that cater to human needs rather than corporate agendas, we can restore the hand’s function as a vital connection between our minds, bodies, and the world.
Voice
Before the advent of sound recording, the human voice was intrinsically linked to the body. Speech and song were transient, dissipating almost as quickly as they emerged. The invention of sound recording at the end of the 19th century effectively liberated the voice from the bodily constraints, giving it a new, enduring existence and enhancing what writing had previously begun.
Like hands, voices serve as a bridge between body and environment. Once carried solely by air, their vibrations now travel through wires, waves, and digital signals. Just as writing expanded the reach of our hands, sound recording endowed voices with a new dimension. Transferred through machines, reconfigured into data, and transformed into novel forms, voices have lived countless lives—imprinted onto vinyl, remixed by DJs, altered via Auto-Tune, parsed by speech recognition, and now even revitalized by AI-generated vocal replicas. These advancements have not only changed the sound of human voices but also how we produce, perceive, and preserve them.
Ear
If the voice serves as our method of reaching out, the ear represents how we receive. Once fine-tuned by communal acoustic experiences, our hearing has now been shaped by technology. From choirs to cochlear implants, and music boxes to algorithm-generated playlists, listening has evolved into a curated, data-driven experience.
The invention of music boxes signified a pivotal moment in the objectification of sound. They began to separate the act of listening from other voices, transforming this experience from a collective activity into an individual engagement with machines. This shift laid the groundwork for the intimate relationship we now share between ears and auditory technology.
With the emergence of mass-produced sound devices—phonographs, gramophones, and transistor radios—people began listening to music without a live performer. Each technological leap in sound recording altered auditory cultures and redefined what the ear signifies, evolving from a direct alignment with the human spirit into a more mechanical concept.
Eye
Modern cameras disconnect visual perception from the body. Though they are now commonplace—integrated into most smartphones and capable of capturing high-resolution images—this was not always the case. Photography’s progenitor, the camera obscura, depended on the proximity between eye and image. This pinhole device projects light through a small opening into a dimmed space, casting a real-time, inverted representation of the outside world—a shadow of reality.
By the 16th century, the camera obscura became emblematic of human vision. This analogy informs the relationship between sight and the external world through immediacy: just as light is cast onto the eye, reality is seen through it. Photography emerged from the camera obscura, transforming a transient projection into permanence. The photograph transitioned reality from ephemeral to fixed, allowing it to be stored, shared, and reproduced endlessly. In doing so, it liberated vision from the constraints of physical observation, enabling sight to be captured, archived, and transmitted.
Despite the evolving complexity of visual technologies, the metaphor equating the camera to the eye persists. This analogy highlights a deeper contradiction at the heart of digital representation: we have faith in our visual experiences even while acknowledging their potential for deception. As machines assume sensory responsibilities, we often forget that our own perception is inherently flawed. Advancements in imaging technology have reshaped our understanding of sight. Today’s digital “eyes”—smartphone cameras, Photoshop software, and AI algorithms—do not see as we do; they construct, enhance, and interpret. As we increasingly delegate the act of seeing to machines, the very essence of vision undergoes transformation. Yet, cameras and the images they produce remain critical touchstones for our perception of reality, even as that reality becomes fluid and abstract.
Foot
The human foot exemplifies exceptional evolutionary design, setting us apart from other species. The earliest hominins lacked the brain size of modern humans, engaged with advanced tools, or communicated through speech. However, they did walk upright. Our feet form the very basis of human evolution, which paved the way for many defining traits of humanity, including our use of tools, language, and flexible diets. This evolution liberated our hands for crafting and conversing, as well as our breath for vocal expression. Walking upright is as essential to our humanity as writing and singing. Our feet encapsulate an extraordinary legacy. As Leonardo da Vinci once said, “The human foot is a masterpiece of engineering and a work of art.”
As the primary connection between our bodies and the world, our feet also serve as interfaces for navigational technologies, transforming our steps into data. Health metrics, such as the oft-quoted ten thousand steps per day, have become as ingrained in our psyche as the saying, “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” A more contemporary take might suggest that such journeys actually commence from a pedometer rather than an intentional step.
Though walking may seem the most natural action for those able to do so, it is being increasingly integrated into technological frameworks. Smart cities, equipped with data-gathering sensors, embody this trend. They represent a future where urban environments function as laboratories for human movement.
Body
The ultimate aim of technology is its own invisibility. When tools function optimally, they fade from our perception—until they break. This kind of ephemeral existence relies not only on well-designed tools but also on the skill and practice of the user. As a surgeon employs a scalpel or a carpenter wields a chisel, successful integration demands synergy between adept tools and skilled bodies. Digital technologies extend this notion further: the ideal tool dissolves, making the human body itself the interface.
We are already navigating a mixed reality. Our bodies engage in a complex dance with data: computers track our keystrokes, footsteps, and heartbeats; they interpret and reorganize our movements; intelligent systems guide our paths, both great and small; we engage socially through digital sound and avatars in virtual realms. Extended reality technologies do not only introduce alternate worlds; they illuminate the reality we occupy, revealing our intricate entanglements with computation.
We craft our digital personas (I’ll confess, mine is subtly enhanced by the Touch Up My Appearance feature in Zoom). We invest our identities into the technologies we use, seeking to transcend the limitations of our own bodies and minds. Ultimately, we end up as mere specters of the platforms that govern us. The phrase “ghost in the machine” derogatorily critiques Descartes’s dualism, suggesting our minds animate our bodies like spirits in shells. An alternate interpretation of digital embodiment reverses this: the mind floats freely, detached from our bodies and merged with technology. Yet we are corporeal beings imbued with flesh and blood. Any meaningful future we envision must remain anchored in this reality.
Mind
In their seminal 1998 work, “The Extended Mind,” philosophers Andy Clark and David Chalmers questioned, “Where does the mind stop and the rest of the world begin?” Their insights represent a pivotal articulation of the extended mind thesis, which contests the traditional notion that the mind exists solely within the confines of the cranium. They posited that cognition arises from the dynamic interplay of brain, body, and external tools. A pencil, a notebook, or a computer screen can become so entwined in our cognitive processes that they are essential to our mental capabilities just as our brains are. Thus, the mind is permeable, extending into the world while simultaneously being influenced by it. Cognition is not contained; it is distributed, emerging from an ecosystem of brain, body, and environment.
Writing serves to extend human cognition, offloading memory and allowing for the storage and retrieval of information beyond the physical body. This technology facilitated not just individual but collective memory, enabling the accumulation of knowledge through structured information. Literacy has fostered the growth of logic, philosophy, and science—the very foundations upon which modern AI is built.
Writing has never been an isolated endeavor. With the help of AI tools, our writing should connect with both our past and future, fostering connections with others as much as with ourselves. The finest human writing inspires open-mindedness, thereby challenging us to create narratives that embrace the new technology we wield. If technology compels us to write, let it not be to duplicate, but to envision anew.
Rather than unconditionally adopting or rejecting emerging technologies, we must question: Do they broaden our perspectives or constrain them? Do they nurture curiosity and complexity, or do they reduce us to mere metrics? How do they influence our perceptions, movements, emotions, communication, and connections? The history of our digital bodies illustrates that the environments we create are never devoid of meaning; they reflect our choices about how we engage with each other and how we wish to be perceived.
