Description
Drawing on decades of research, The Extinction of Experience is a philosophical defence of what makes us human - and a powerful, urgent call to reclaim ourselves in a digital world.
Human experiences are disappearing.
Social media, gaming and dating apps have usurped in-person interaction; handwriting is no longer prioritised in schools; and emotion is sooner expressed through likes and emojis than face-to-face conversations. With headphones in and eyes trained on our phones, even boredom has been obliterated. But, as Christine Rosen expertly shows, when we embrace this mediated life and conform to the demands of the machine, we risk becoming disconnected and machine-like ourselves.
There is another way. For too long, under the influence of corporate giants and tech enthusiasts, we've accepted the idea that change always means better. But rapidly developing technology isn't neutral - it's ambivalent, and capable of enormous harm. To improve our well-being, help future generations flourish and recover our shared humanity, we must become more critical, mindful users of technology, and more discerning of how it uses us.
From TikTok challenges and algorithms to surveillance devices and conspiracy culture, The Extinction of Experience reveals the human crisis of our digital age - and urges us to return to the real world, while we still can.
Reviews
Technology is having pervasive effects on us all, effects which are hard to put into words. Christine Rosen finds the words I've longed for. The Extinction of Experience is an extremely important book, and its message all the more urgent as AI threatens to make everything effortless, frictionless, and disembodied -- Jonathan Haidt, author of The Anxious Generation
A fascinating and timely book about the essential real-world experiences we're watching vanish before our screen-addled eyes. Resisting the lure of nostalgia, but rejecting the glib assumption that more technology is always better, Christine Rosen makes a passionate case for the face-to-face, embodied, analogue, unpredictable, unmediated life, and its centrality to a vibrant and truly meaningful human existence -- Oliver Burkeman, author of Meditations for Mortals
Essential reading in a dislocated world -- Katherine May, author of Wintering
The Extinction of Experience is a beautifully expressed ode to the vanishing components of life that remain unplanned, unresearched, and unrecorded. Rosen is an excellent guide, explaining why there's no substitute for seeing, feeling, and touching the world directly -- Adam Alter, author of Irresistible
Rosen has written a passionate anatomy of what we lose when we relinquish real life to machine-mediated activity. More than a eulogy, it is an urgent reminder to value and defend real life, with all its riskiness and rough edges, against the safe, smooth, screen-filtered reverie that promises so much more than it can encompass -- Timandra Harkness, author of Technology is Not the Problem
[Rosen] is one of America's best writers and thinkers * Washington Examiner *
Important ... an urgent interrogation of our increasing reliance on digitally mediated experience * Lit Hub *
A useful prod to conscience [and] a thoughtful and timely reminder that it's not too late to retrieve what we miss * Wall Street Journal *
A roving investigation of the threat technology poses to our social and cultural norms ... But don't mistake this book for a hand-wringing polemic against change; rather, which each disappearing ritual, Rosen highlights the deeper loss to the human psyche ... The Extinction of Experience is a compelling reminder that 'go touch grass' is more than just an internet punchline - in fact, it's a human imperative * Esquire *
Engaging and impeccably researched, this book serves as an important reminder that survival during this time of accelerated global change will depend on humanity's willingness to impose intelligent, self-preserving limitations. Timely, well-informed reading * Kirkus *
Author description
Christine Rosen is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a columnist for Commentary magazine, senior editor at the New Atlantis and fellow at the University of Virginia's Institute for Advance Studies in Culture. She is the author of six books, including My Fundamentalist Education, which was chosen as a Washington Post Nonfiction Book of the Year. Her writing has been published in the New York Times, Slate, Los Angeles Times, Politico and more. She lives in Washington, DC.
