The Extinction of Experience

Urges us to reclaim the real-world experiences that make life worth living * Guardian, Books to Look Forward to in 2025 *Illuminating * Telegraph, Best Books of 2025 *This book is not a Luddite manifesto … The question becomes: how do we restore a healthier status quo? … Rosen gives a razor-sharp analysis of this modern malady, capturing with style how convenience and efficiency have become the enemies of the good life * The Times *Engaging and snappy … A well-evidenced and well-principled defence of human experience … Where Rosen succeeds emphatically is in explaining the serious issues without simply blaming anyone - a radical act in these matters * Telegraph *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 GenerationA 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 MortalsEssential reading in a dislocated world – Katherine May, author of WinteringThe 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 IrresistibleRosen 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 *Rosen’s book is a meditation on what it means to be a fulfilled human being in a world defined by technology. She does a very good job of drawing our attention to the experiences we’re losing and making the case that we should resist these losses * Vox *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, with 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 *A civilised and scholarly writer – Steven Poole * Guardian *A compendium of engrossingly dystopian cautionary tales * Washington Post *Feisty … Fascinating … One of the pleasures of this book is learning what an engagingly intrepid researcher Rosen is … The Extinction of Experience is an essential book for our time * Commentary Magazine *Christine Rosen joins a growing wave of writers like Jonathan Haidt in The Anxious Generation arguing against the unintended consequences of technology. She makes the case that our algorithm-led lives aren’t just unnatural, they’re bad for us * Evening Standard *I inhaled it ... 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 – Hugh Hewitt

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.