The Extinction of Experience: Being Humans in a Disembodied World/Christine Rosen (New York: Norton, 2024)

Methodically, determinedly, and convincingly, Christine Rosen walks the reader through gallery after gallery showcasing how we have allowed technology into our lives. “Allowed” is the operative word, because we have done so willingly, with enthusiasm for the ways our lives are “enhanced” by all the wearables, algorithms and screens that we take for granted. This is no luddite screed. From the printing press to the photograph to online dating, we have always been of two minds when new technologies upend our lives. So the operative question is: how is this time different?

She builds her case by digging deep in different areas. The cellphone has caused an epidemic of “civil inattention,” in which we treat each other as objects registered but not otherwise engaged with (38). In the process we experience “negative social well-being,” feelings of inadequacy and being out of step (45). In evolutionary terms it turns out that humans crave physical proximity and are lost without it. We have also dropped a slew of embodied, physical practices that used to define us as human—handwriting, drawing, tinkering, unstructured play, and day-dreaming, all the arts which subtly taught us patience and perseverance. Instead we automatically opt for speed, novelty, and convenience in every realm. We no longer have the patience to wait in line. While not advocating communist era lines for every commodity, Rosen reminds us of Auden’s view that impatience is the only cardinal sin. It is impatience which drives us out of Paradise, and out of harmony with our surroundings (83). The disappearance of patience has forced us into an eternal present, a bias toward “nowness,” our horizons constricted into the time it takes to upload a web page. As Herbert Simon notes, we suffer from a wealth of information and a poverty of attention (95).

But Rosen’s overall point is that experience itself is being refashioned. We are no longer content to have experienced travel. It must now be confirmed through a mountain of selfies. We are no longer satisfied with sticky, messy sex. It is now channeled into porn, which users say is also satisfying. The body is no longer needed for experience. Experience is undergone in non-physical spaces created for us by …you guessed it, Big Tech. We go on field-trip simulations instead of messy, boring bus rides. 

Rosen’s work amounts to a big red flag. We should not allow our “collective complacency” to lead us into the great slide down the hill of no return. We are about to plunge headlong into that pool Walter Benjamin labelled the poverty of experience. In the process we are easily distracted, impatient to a fault, unable to connect to place, and obsessing over internet-centered issues. Experience is now all about information (17), not sensory contact. As a result what it means to be human is changing. Mirroring an obsession found in tons of sci-fi, we have missed that we are becoming less human even as we obsess about whether robots will be human.

Rosen gradually reveals what she means by human. It turns out to be a well-fleshed philosophical position. Humans accept that experience is messy. Not every interaction will be seamless. Chance and rupture, as she quotes Richard Sennett, are part of life. Travel involves frustration and serendipity. It also involves other humans—“breathing the same air, sensing one another’s unspoken feelings…being attuned to one another’s gestures”—in other words, all the things we learn in our crucial first years of life. Are these elements suddenly not part of being human? For me the most meaningful point is the importance she places on a wandering mind. “Openness to experience,” something I have always assumed was a trait of my (Baby Boomer) generation, involves a slew of related psychological traits. These are listed in a quote by psychologist Scott Barry Kaufman as:

 “self-awareness, creative incubation, improvisation and evaluation memory consolidation, autobiographical planning, goal driven thought, future planning, retrieval of deeply personal memories, reflective consideration of the meaning of events and experiences, simulating the Perspex time of another person, evaluating the implications of self and others’ emotional reactions, moral reasoning, and reflective compassion” (97).

And we are giving that up in favor of what, efficiency? A bias toward instant gratification, of “nowness?” No thanks.

The ideal condition of humanity, Rosen implies, is one in which we have the opportunity, the time, and the right to enter “flow,” a state of total absorption (96). So how does total absorption in your cellphone not equal flow? Digital interaction, it turns out, does not evoke two key humanity-defining attributes—patience and empathy. Without these the absorption is ephemeral, superficial. With these two qualities, which can only be built up over time, a mature human can choose total absorption. Without, we are seduced into a state of absorbed dependency.

The failure to inculcate patience and empathy leads to a radically flat emotional landscape. We now prefer less interaction with others. We have faux, “one-click” empathy. We rush through public spaces oblivious to others. We don’t have time to reflect on feelings. They’re too messy anyway—why bother? Let someone else do the birthday party. But it is exactly the contingent, complex nature of emotional interactions that creates our sense of self as human. This is the poetry of life.

Rosen quotes Lewis Mumford’s insight that technological change alone does not define an era. Each era is characterized by a “reorientation of wishes, habits, ideas and goals” (24). Is she calling for a wholesale repudiation of technology? Certainly not. But conscious choosing is called for, instead of letting Big Tech lead us into our own extinction experience.  

Rosen is at her best in the chapters on mediated pleasures. We are increasingly experiencing life through digital platforms, leading to what Ian Kerr describes as the”evidentiary society” (175). No trip is real without selfies to prove it. In fact the real thing is often a let-down. Pornography raises the bar so high that real-life sex can never measure up. This same “forced mediation” is now appearing everywhere. We can ski, hunt or bird watch virtually, and we accept virtual balconies on cruise ships without batting an eye. At the same time we have lost our appetite for the “vague bewilderment” or the sense of the ineffable that unplanned travel can bring. And we sense that our curated lives are becoming spice-less, bland.

Yet I am not overly pessimistic. The impact of online tech on emotional habits, while real, seems like something we are already managing. My son and his wife, both busy doctors, pick up their phones at home only to answer a call or to schedule something. Otherwise their phones remain face-down as they interact with family members and go about their many chores. In other words, surfing the web or hanging out on Tik Tok are simply not options if you lead a busy life. Nor are the enticements of the internet are not enough on their own. There is a whole generation of young people able to keep their distance from mediated experience. 

The problem may lie with Gen Z, those born after just before and after 2000, whose lives have been massively impacted by social media. Leaving aside the COVID experience, I think it’s too soon to simply write this generation off as hopelessly addicted, their brains puddles of mush. Like previous generations they can find a happy medium. Humans are adaptive. And it will take more than bright shiny tech toys to reshape human nature. Rosen has given us a thoughtful, systematic warning about the unthinking adoption of online habits and enticements.
With the help of such thinkers, we can handle it.