Christine Rosen

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

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

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

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

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

Important ... an urgent interrogation of our increasing reliance on digitally mediated experience

A useful prod to conscience [and] a thoughtful and timely reminder that it's not too late to retrieve what we miss

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

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

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

A civilised and scholarly writer

A compendium of engrossingly dystopian cautionary tales

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

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

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

A timely and insightful call to reclaim our humanity

Evan Selinger, Professor of Philosophy, Rochester Institute of Technology

Wonderful ... 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 marvellous ways

Alan Jacobs, author of Breaking Bread with the Dead

The Extinction of Experience is very well written, informative, and peppered with personal anecdotes, and Rosen's evidently extensive erudition, on fine display here, makes the text engagingly educational ... Interesting and informative

Reclaiming Our Humanity in a Digital World

Drawing on decades of research, The Extinction of Experience is a philosophical defence of what makes us human – and a powerful, urgent call to reclaim ourselves in a digital world. 
 
Human experiences are disappearing. 
 
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 disconnected and machine-like ourselves. 
 
There is another way. For too long, under the influence of corporate giants and tech enthusiasts, 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 critical, 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.

Christine Rosen

Praise for The Extinction of Experience

Urges us to reclaim the real-world experiences that make life worth living

Illuminating

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 convenien ...

Urges us to reclaim the real-world experiences that make life worth living

Illuminating

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 convenien ...

Urges us to reclaim the real-world experiences that make life worth living

Illuminating

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 convenien ...

Follow penguin

Follow ladybird

Follow puffin

Sign up to the Penguin newsletter