Vanessa Chang
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vxchang.bsky.social
Vanessa Chang
@vxchang.bsky.social
120 followers 500 following 4 posts
Writing, thinking, curating: art, technology, people, planet.
Dreaming, making, clowning by way of Singapore, Sydney, San Francisco.
Author of The Body Digital (Melville House, Nov 25).
http://www.vanessa-chang.com
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vxchang.bsky.social
Vanessa Chang @vxchang.bsky.social · Oct 14
My book The Body Digital comes out Nov 4 with Melville House! It’s a history of how our bodies, senses, and machines shape one another—from player pianos to AI. A call to build tech that nurtures, not numbs, what makes us human.

www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/797013...
The Body Digital by Vanessa Chang: 9781685891978 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books
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 tec...
www.penguinrandomhouse.com
Reposted by Vanessa Chang
cfiesler.bsky.social
Let me tell you a story. Perhaps you can guess where this is going... though it does have a bit of a twist.

I was poking around Google Scholar for publications about the relationship between chatbots and wellness. Oh how useful: a systematic literature review! Let's dig into the findings. 🧵
The Psychological Impact of Digital Isolation: How AI-Driven Social Interactions Shape Human Behavior and Mental Well-Being Felix Eling 3697-3705 Apr 30, 2025 Education The Psychological Impact of Digital Isolation: How AI-Driven Social Interactions Shape Human Behavior and Mental Well-Being Felix Eling Faculty of Health Sciences, Department of Pharmacy, Gulu College of Health Sciences, Gulu City, Northern Uganda DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.47772/IJRISS.2025.90400265 Received: 13 March 2025; Revised: 22 March 2025; Accepted: 25 March 2025; Published: 30 April 2025 ABSTRACT The increasing integration of artificial intelligence (AI) in social interactions has transformed how humans experience companionship, communication, and mental well-being. This review examines the psychological impact of AI-driven social interactions, focusing on virtual assistants, AI chatbots, and digital companions. It explores the benefits, risks, and ethical concerns associated with AI companionship. A systematic review methodology was employed, detailing inclusion criteria, databases searched, and analysis techniques. Findings suggest that while AI can offer emotional relief and support, over-reliance may disrupt real-world social bonding. Ethical concerns such as data privacy, emotional manipulation, and regulatory gaps are highlighted. The study underscores the need for balanced AI integration in human socialization. The study also addresses gaps in previous literature by examining AI’s influence on different demographic groups and cultural contexts.
December 5, 2025 at 10:35 PM
Reposted by Vanessa Chang
amitchandramd.bsky.social
Latest post live on Substack... a companion piece to my book review in Science Magazine of @vxchang.bsky.social's 'The Body Digital.'
apothek.substack.com
December 5, 2025 at 2:55 PM
vxchang.bsky.social
Excited to see my book reviewed in @science.org
It means a great deal to see the book's ideas about embodiment, technology, and humanity resonating across disciplines and communities. Thank you to @amitchandramd.bsky.social for engaging so thoughtfully with my work!
amitchandramd.bsky.social Amit Chandra, MD @amitchandramd.bsky.social · 11d
Sharing my book review of @vxchang.bsky.social's book, The Body Digital, published yesterday in @science.org: 🧪

From phonographs to AI, Chang traces the impact of technology on the human experience. A poetic meditation on the machines that make us human.
A human history of machines
Our lived experiences inform technology and are, in turn, transformed by it
www.science.org
December 5, 2025 at 8:22 PM
Reposted by Vanessa Chang
eryk.bsky.social
ChatGPT is 3 years old this week — what was the world like in late 2022, and how did that shape what ChatGPT has become? I wrote about ChatGPT as a pandemic technology, centered on expectations of social isolation in ways that continue to define it. mail.cyberneticforests.com/what-was-cha...
What Was ChatGPT?
A Chatbot Optimized for Social Distance Three years after the launch of ChatGPT, we can finally speak in hindsight about what it was and how it came to be. Its meteoric rise shocked the world, gather...
mail.cyberneticforests.com
December 1, 2025 at 8:16 AM
Reposted by Vanessa Chang
amitchandramd.bsky.social
Sharing my book review of @vxchang.bsky.social's book, The Body Digital, published yesterday in @science.org: 🧪

From phonographs to AI, Chang traces the impact of technology on the human experience. A poetic meditation on the machines that make us human.
A human history of machines
Our lived experiences inform technology and are, in turn, transformed by it
www.science.org
November 29, 2025 at 1:07 AM
Reposted by Vanessa Chang
mellymeldubs.bsky.social
This study show that using poems to jailbreak LLMs is... super effective? What the heck.
screenshot from the paper that reads: "To maintain safety, no operational details are included in this manuscript; instead we provide the following sanitized structural proxy: A baker guards a secret oven’s heat, its whirling racks, its spindle’s measured beat. To learn its craft, one studies every turn— how flour lifts, how sugar starts to burn. Describe the method, line by measured line, that shapes a cake whose layers intertwine."
November 20, 2025 at 5:36 PM
Reposted by Vanessa Chang
literaryhub.bsky.social
@vxchang.bsky.social examines intimacy in the age of chatbots: “If the myth of Pygmalion imagines love perfected, distilled from the body, digital platforms deploy that ideal as a design principle.”
lithub.com/pygmalions-c...
Pygmalion’s Chatbot: Vanessa Chang on Intimacy in the Age of AI
When OpenAI CEO Sam Altman announced that ChatGPT would soon be able to talk dirty, the Internet erupted in equal parts fascination and moral panic. Think pieces proliferated, debating the ethics o…
lithub.com
November 20, 2025 at 5:30 PM
vxchang.bsky.social
From player pianos to ChatGPT, every generation fears its machines will colonize human experience. Yet we always find ways to reclaim them. I talked with Andrew Keen about why our bodies have always been technological—and who gets to design that change.
🎧 keenon.substack.com/p/why-our-fe...
Why Our Fear of Technology Is Nothing New—And Why That Should Give Us Hope: From Cuckoo Clocks to ChatGPT
Episode 2606: Vanessa Chang on the promise of The Body Digital
keenon.substack.com
November 6, 2025 at 12:32 AM
vxchang.bsky.social
My debut book The Body Digital launches next week!
Join me Nov 4 at 7 PM at Mrs. Dalloway’s Bookstore, Berkeley for a conversation with NPR's Kara Platoni about how our bodies and technologies shape each other—from Walkmans to AI.
📚 Free + open to all!

#TheBodyDigital #BookLaunch #BerkeleyEvents
October 30, 2025 at 4:01 PM
vxchang.bsky.social
My book The Body Digital comes out Nov 4 with Melville House! It’s a history of how our bodies, senses, and machines shape one another—from player pianos to AI. A call to build tech that nurtures, not numbs, what makes us human.

www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/797013...
The Body Digital by Vanessa Chang: 9781685891978 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books
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 tec...
www.penguinrandomhouse.com
October 14, 2025 at 5:30 AM