You think you’re using your phone. It’s using you back

你以为你在用手机,其实是手机在利用你。

Science Quickly

2026-05-29

23 分钟
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单集简介 ...

In this episode of Science Quickly, author Vanessa Chang discusses her book The Body Digital: A Brief History of Humans and Machines from Cuckoo Clocks to ChatGPT. The book explores how technologies—from handwriting to smartphones and AI—don’t just extend human capability but subtly reshape our bodies, behaviors and relationships, raising urgent questions about connection, design and the meaning of being human in an increasingly algorithmic world. Recommended Reading: The Body Digital. Vanessa Chang. Melville House, 2025 E-mail us at sciencequickly@sciam.com if you have any questions, comments or ideas for stories we should cover! Discover something new everyday: subscribe to Scientific American and sign up for Today in Science, our daily newsletter. Science Quickly is produced by Rachel Feltman, Fonda Mwangi, Sushmita Pathak and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was edited by Alex Sugiura, with fact-checking by Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck. Our theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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  • For Scientific American Science Quickly, I'm Rachel Feltman.

  • If you're listening to this, you probably have a phone somewhere nearby.

  • Think about that device for a second and ask yourself a question.

  • Does it expand your horizons or does it contract them?

  • For me, the answer is probably like a little bit of the former

  • that I use to justify way too much of the latter.

  • Fretting over the relationship you have with your phone is pretty common these days.

  • But our little pocket computers are merely the brightest

  • stars in the constellation of technological innovations that surround us.

  • After all, humanity has been shaped by our relationship

  • to tools since our ancestors first started breaking stuff open with rocks.

  • Vanessa Cheng is the director of programs at Leonardo, the International Society for the Arts, Sciences, and Technology.