The Extinction of Experience

We embraced the mediated life—from Facetune and Venmo to meme culture and the Metaverse—because these technologies offer novelty and convenience. But they also transform our sense of self and warp the boundaries between virtual and real. What are the costs? Who are we in a disembodied world?

In The Extinction of Experience, Christine Rosen investigates the cultural and emotional shifts that accompany our embrace of technology. In warm, philosophical prose, Rosen reveals key human experiences at risk of going extinct, including face-to-face communication, sense of place, authentic emotion, and even boredom. Considering cultural trends, like TikTok challenges and mukbang, and politically unsettling phenomena, like sociometric trackers and online conspiracy culture, Rosen exposes an unprecedented shift in the human condition, one that habituates us to alienation and control. To recover our humanity and come back to the real world, we must reclaim serendipity, community, patience, and risk.

"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 Meditation for Mortals
"Essential reading in a dislocated world. " -- Katherine May, author of Wintering
"Rosen deserves praise for looking at areas of life that have been less frequently considered by those who ponder the disruptive effects of tech adaptations . . . A useful prod to conscience. [The Extinction of Experience] is also a thoughtful and timely reminder that it’s not too late to retrieve what we miss." -- Meghan Cox Gurdon - Wall Street Journal
"Rigorously researched and elegiacally told, 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." -- Adrienne Westenfeld - Esquire
"In the strongest possible terms . . . go and order the book. You will look at your phone differently when you are finished with The Extinction of Experience —very differently." -- Hugh Hewitt, "Morning Glory" on Fox News
"Important . . . an urgent interrogation of our increasing reliance on digitally mediated experience." -- Lit Hub
"[A] compendium of engrossingly dystopian cautionary tales." -- Becca Rothfield - Washington Post
"[Rosen] is one of America's best writers and thinkers. " -- Mark Judge - Washington Examiner
"Rosen’s book is needed right now. As more of our daily experience goes mediated and buffered through screens, it’s important to wonder what we’re losing, and to return to a fundamental emphasis on visceral proximity and real-life connections with others." -- Peter Biles - Mind Matters
"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 Reviews
"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 touch the world directly." -- Adam Alter, New York Times bestselling author of Irresistible
"In an era when excessive screen time and the pressure to curate our lives for social media are just two of the many powerful technological forces that diminish our ability to be fully present, actualize our best selves, and meaningfully engage with the world around us, Christine Rosen’s The Extinction of Experience is a timely and insightful call to reclaim our humanity." -- Evan Selinger, Professor of Philosophy, Rochester Institute of Technology
"Christine Rosen has written a wonderful book. It is not merely a warning against algorithmic control of our lives, but, more essentially, an encouraging guidebook to the recovery of personal experience in all its manifold forms. The Extinction of Experience reconnects us with our own lives in marvelous ways." -- Alan Jacobs, author of Breaking Bread with the Dead: A Reader's Guide to a More Tranquil Mind

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 Advanced Studies in Culture. She lives in Washington, DC.

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