The Extinction of Experience

Reviews / Votes

"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 "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 "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, New York Times best-selling author of Irresistible "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 "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 "Essential reading in a dislocated world. " -- Katherine May, author of Wintering "Rosen's is a book of horrors, a catalogue-the best I know of to date-of the various ways in which human experience is being commodified and expropriated by our omnipresent digital apparatus. Her work adds a new dimension to a growing literature of digital skepticism, complementing the efforts of authors such as Nicholas Carr, Matthew Crawford, and L. M. Sacasas." -- Ian Tuttle - National Review "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, Fox News "Important...an urgent interrogation of our increasing reliance on digitally mediated experience." -- Literary Hub "A compendium of engrossingly dystopian cautionary tales." -- Becca Rothfeld - Washington Post "[Rosen] is one of America's best writers and thinkers." -- Mark Judge - Washington Examiner "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 "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