
The Extinction of Experience
How to Be Human in a Digital World
Christine Rosen(Author)
Vintage (Publisher)
Published on 22. January 2026
Book
Paperback/Softback
272 pages
978-1-5299-6703-6 (ISBN)
Description
'A passionate case for the human experiences which are central to a truly vibrant and meaningful existence' OLIVER BURKEMAN
'Christine Rosen finds the words I've longer for ... an extremely important book' JONATHAN HAIDT
Human experiences are disappearing.
Community is now found online; schools prioritise typing; and with headphones in and eyes glued to our phones, we've even obliterated boredom. Convenient and entertaining, certainly, but with each technological embrace we risk becoming more machine-like ourselves.
There is a healthier, wiser and more humane way.
In this insightful reckoning of modern life and its acutely modern malady, Christine Rosen reveals the true cost of our digital age - and shows us how to return to the real world, while we still can.
'Illuminating ... well-argued and well-principled' TELEGRAPH, BEST BOOK OF 2025
'Essential reading in a dislocated world' KATHERINE MAY
'Razor-sharp' THE TIMES
'Christine Rosen is one of America's best writers and thinkers' WASHINGTON EXAMINER
'Christine Rosen finds the words I've longer for ... an extremely important book' JONATHAN HAIDT
Human experiences are disappearing.
Community is now found online; schools prioritise typing; and with headphones in and eyes glued to our phones, we've even obliterated boredom. Convenient and entertaining, certainly, but with each technological embrace we risk becoming more machine-like ourselves.
There is a healthier, wiser and more humane way.
In this insightful reckoning of modern life and its acutely modern malady, Christine Rosen reveals the true cost of our digital age - and shows us how to return to the real world, while we still can.
'Illuminating ... well-argued and well-principled' TELEGRAPH, BEST BOOK OF 2025
'Essential reading in a dislocated world' KATHERINE MAY
'Razor-sharp' THE TIMES
'Christine Rosen is one of America's best writers and thinkers' WASHINGTON EXAMINER
Reviews / Votes
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 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 *More details
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Vintage Publishing
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
Paperback (UK-B)
Dimensions
Height: 195 mm
Width: 128 mm
Thickness: 19 mm
Weight
198 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-5299-6703-6 (9781529967036)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

E-Book
01/2025
Vintage Digital
€10.99
Available for download
Person
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.