‘The Extinction of Experience’ Review: Devices and Distraction

There is an opportunity cost to picking up your smartphone. All sorts of activities, interactions and interests are diminished or lost.

Meghan Cox GurdonOct. 7, 2024 at 3:05 pm

In the early 19th century, the harp ruled Ireland. But when the piano came along, people rushed to it with such enthusiasm that the long-revered Celtic instrument seemed fusty and obsolete. Pianos were chic, modern and comparatively easy to play. The culture of the Irish harp faded fast.

The Irish example comes to mind because it captures the possibility of reclamation that Christine Rosen holds out in “The Extinction of Experience,” a short, ambitious book about the philosophical dilemma of “being human in a disembodied world” of screens and devices.

Ms. Rosen, a historian and senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, has long worried about the social knock-on effects of technological advances. Here she warns of the risks of some of our choices and asks, as she goes, that we question the motives of companies “so eager to have us ‘share’ ourselves with them.” Above all, she implores readers to “consider what we are losing, as well as gaining, when we allow new technologies into our lives.”

Ms. Rosen is neither a Luddite nor a Cassandra; she doesn’t see only threat and misery in newfangled things. She acknowledges the efficiencies wrought by the internet, and she gives space to techno-optimists to express their delight at the benisons of the screen. The new ways, she concedes, “are compelling.” The problem, she writes, is that the old ways “are dying without even a brief eulogy—and without an accounting of what their disappearance heralds for what it means to be human.”

Being human has traditionally involved being a kinetic, tactile mortal who has evolved to read the faces and gestures of other mortals and to perform complex physical actions. In our embrace of streamlining technologies, we have adopted screen-based virtual realities that require little motion and that eliminate points of human contact. To open a letter, set an alarm, take a picture, make a date—any of these minor tasks would once have summoned different movements but can now be accomplished with the touch of a finger to a screen. And increasingly, of course, we needn’t deal with other people in the flesh.

To Ms. Rosen, each embodied activity that disappears takes with it some small element of experience that may, when it’s gone, leave us depleted—while habituating us to engineered, homogenized behaviors. Throughout the book, she remarks the ways that, in adjusting to the algorithmic demands of our machines, we are in danger of developing machinelike responses ourselves: “It is the subtle but important difference between putting something you like on Instagram and doing something specifically for Instagram because you want to be liked.”

The paradoxical qualities of social media, which both alienate and connect, have been well-examined elsewhere. The accompanying phenomenon of mass loneliness, too. Ms. 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. The important things now vanishing, she notes, include spending unmediated time with others, stumbling upon serendipitous discoveries, drawing by hand, chatting with strangers and daydreaming.

Daydreaming, of course, can’t happen if a person picks up her smartphone for a micro-burst of entertainment the moment she has to wait in line at the supermarket; nor, buried in her screen, will she shoot the breeze with other customers or the cashier. Evidence marshaled by Ms. Rosen suggests that a person who doesn’t daydream is a person less inclined to introspection and invention.

When a person trades momentary boredom for a shot of screen-based dopamine, she gets the pleasure of escape but misses out on being awake and present in the moment and perhaps foregoes an insight or a recollection that would have added something to her life. A person who avoids interacting with others fends off potentially awkward exchanges but may also gradually lose the skills to recognize social cues. There is an opportunity cost to picking up your phone.

There are other costs too. Ms. Rosen is particularly keen to trace the effects of what might seem a trivial concern, the cultural shift away from writing by hand to writing on keyboards. Many of us who learned to form cursive letters as children now find that our hands cramp if we try to compose even a shopping list. Most younger people can’t write in cursive at all; nor can they read it. This is doubly poignant for Americans: Citizens who find cursive script illegible won’t be able to read our founding documents.

Gone, with handwriting, are small aesthetic pleasures, such as the sight of ink sinking into paper or the curve of a beautiful capital letter. Gone too, according to data presented here, is a practice of making tiny muscular hand movements that prepare young brains for reading and help older brains retain information. The rapid decline of a means of communication used by humans for centuries is, Ms. Rosen says, “a symbol of how thoughtlessly we’ve settled between the old and the new.”

‘The Extinction of Experience’ Review: Devices and Distraction

There is an opportunity cost to picking up your smartphone. All sorts of activities, interactions and interests are diminished or lost.

Meghan Cox GurdonOct. 7, 2024 at 3:05 pm

In the early 19th century, the harp ruled Ireland. But when the piano came along, people rushed to it with such enthusiasm that the long-revered Celtic instrument seemed fusty and obsolete. Pianos were chic, modern and comparatively easy to play. The culture of the Irish harp faded fast.

The Irish example comes to mind because it captures the possibility of reclamation that Christine Rosen holds out in “The Extinction of Experience,” a short, ambitious book about the philosophical dilemma of “being human in a disembodied world” of screens and devices.

Ms. Rosen, a historian and senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, has long worried about the social knock-on effects of technological advances. Here she warns of the risks of some of our choices and asks, as she goes, that we question the motives of companies “so eager to have us ‘share’ ourselves with them.” Above all, she implores readers to “consider what we are losing, as well as gaining, when we allow new technologies into our lives.”

Ms. Rosen is neither a Luddite nor a Cassandra; she doesn’t see only threat and misery in newfangled things. She acknowledges the efficiencies wrought by the internet, and she gives space to techno-optimists to express their delight at the benisons of the screen. The new ways, she concedes, “are compelling.” The problem, she writes, is that the old ways “are dying without even a brief eulogy—and without an accounting of what their disappearance heralds for what it means to be human.”

Being human has traditionally involved being a kinetic, tactile mortal who has evolved to read the faces and gestures of other mortals and to perform complex physical actions. In our embrace of streamlining technologies, we have adopted screen-based virtual realities that require little motion and that eliminate points of human contact. To open a letter, set an alarm, take a picture, make a date—any of these minor tasks would once have summoned different movements but can now be accomplished with the touch of a finger to a screen. And increasingly, of course, we needn’t deal with other people in the flesh.

To Ms. Rosen, each embodied activity that disappears takes with it some small element of experience that may, when it’s gone, leave us depleted—while habituating us to engineered, homogenized behaviors. Throughout the book, she remarks the ways that, in adjusting to the algorithmic demands of our machines, we are in danger of developing machinelike responses ourselves: “It is the subtle but important difference between putting something you like on Instagram and doing something specifically for Instagram because you want to be liked.”

The paradoxical qualities of social media, which both alienate and connect, have been well-examined elsewhere. The accompanying phenomenon of mass loneliness, too. Ms. 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. The important things now vanishing, she notes, include spending unmediated time with others, stumbling upon serendipitous discoveries, drawing by hand, chatting with strangers and daydreaming.

Daydreaming, of course, can’t happen if a person picks up her smartphone for a micro-burst of entertainment the moment she has to wait in line at the supermarket; nor, buried in her screen, will she shoot the breeze with other customers or the cashier. Evidence marshaled by Ms. Rosen suggests that a person who doesn’t daydream is a person less inclined to introspection and invention.

When a person trades momentary boredom for a shot of screen-based dopamine, she gets the pleasure of escape but misses out on being awake and present in the moment and perhaps foregoes an insight or a recollection that would have added something to her life. A person who avoids interacting with others fends off potentially awkward exchanges but may also gradually lose the skills to recognize social cues. There is an opportunity cost to picking up your phone.

There are other costs too. Ms. Rosen is particularly keen to trace the effects of what might seem a trivial concern, the cultural shift away from writing by hand to writing on keyboards. Many of us who learned to form cursive letters as children now find that our hands cramp if we try to compose even a shopping list. Most younger people can’t write in cursive at all; nor can they read it. This is doubly poignant for Americans: Citizens who find cursive script illegible won’t be able to read our founding documents.

Gone, with handwriting, are small aesthetic pleasures, such as the sight of ink sinking into paper or the curve of a beautiful capital letter. Gone too, according to data presented here, is a practice of making tiny muscular hand movements that prepare young brains for reading and help older brains retain information. The rapid decline of a means of communication used by humans for centuries is, Ms. Rosen says, “a symbol of how thoughtlessly we’ve settled between the old and the new.”

You needn’t wish to have boredom or handwriting put at the center of your life to see that Ms. Rosen has a point. The rush to adapt to personal technologies has changed the ways we behave, and it can’t be anything but wise to consider where we are as we brace for the coming transformations of artificial intelligence. “The Extinction of Experience” doesn’t provide solutions to modern moral complexities—there may be none, or none that wouldn’t require a major shift in sensibility—but it is a useful prod to conscience. It is also a thoughtful and timely reminder that it’s not too late to retrieve what we miss.

Mrs. Gurdon, a Journal contributor, is the author of “The Enchanted Hour: The Miraculous Power of Reading Aloud in the Age of Distraction.”

You needn’t wish to have boredom or handwriting put at the center of your life to see that Ms. Rosen has a point. The rush to adapt to personal technologies has changed the ways we behave, and it can’t be anything but wise to consider where we are as we brace for the coming transformations of artificial intelligence. “The Extinction of Experience” doesn’t provide solutions to modern moral complexities—there may be none, or none that wouldn’t require a major shift in sensibility—but it is a useful prod to conscience. It is also a thoughtful and timely reminder that it’s not too late to retrieve what we miss.

Mrs. Gurdon, a Journal contributor, is the author of “The Enchanted Hour: The Miraculous Power of Reading Aloud in the Age of Distraction.”