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The Extinction of Experience: Reclaiming Our Humanity in a Digital World (Hardback)
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The Extinction of Experience: Reclaiming Our Humanity in a Digital World (Hardback)

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Hardback 272 Pages
Published: 23/01/2025
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Waterstones Says

From the power of algorithms to conspiracy culture, Christine Rosen's illuminating and urgent book explores the vital question of what our increasing willingness to embrace mediated life and outsource part of our thinking to machines is doing to our humanity.

Human experiences are disappearing. The Extinction of Experience is a philosophical defence of what makes us human – and a powerful call to reclaim ourselves in a digital world.

Social media, gaming and dating apps have usurped in-person interaction; handwriting is no longer prioritised in schools; and emotion is sooner expressed through likes and emojis than face-to-face conversations. With headphones in and eyes trained on our phones, even boredom has been obliterated. But, as Christine Rosen expertly shows, when we embrace this mediated life and conform to the demands of the machine, we risk becoming more machine-like ourselves.

There is another way. For too long we’ve accepted the idea that change always means better. But rapidly developing technology isn’t neutral – it’s ambivalent, and capable of enormous harm. To improve our well-being, help future generations flourish and recover our shared humanity, we must become more mindful users of technology and more discerning of how it uses us.

From TikTok challenges and algorithms to surveillance devices and conspiracy culture, The Extinction of Experience reveals the human crisis of our digital age – and urges us to return to the real world, while we still can.

Publisher: Vintage Publishing
ISBN: 9781847922083
Number of pages: 272
Weight: 466 g
Dimensions: 241 x 164 x 28 mm


MEDIA REVIEWS

Urges us to reclaim the real-world experiences that make life worth living - Guardian, Books to Look Forward to in 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

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

A timely and insightful call to reclaim our humanity - Evan Selinger, Professor of Philosophy, Rochester Institute of Technology

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Kelly at Waterstones Aviemore

“A reminder to look around you with your eyes, not through your phone.”

Christine Rosen's book is a powerful wake up call with the message " Look up from your phone and see the world around you". Giving examples of where people have missed/ are missing opportunities or... More

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