Christine Rosen – författare

We embraced the mediated life—from Facetune and Venmo to meme culture and the Metaverse—because these technologies offer novelty and convenience. But they also transform our sense of self and warp the boundaries between virtual and real. What are the costs? Who are we in a disembodied world?In The Extinction of Experience, Christine Rosen investigates the cultural and emotional shifts that accompany our embrace of technology. In warm, philosophical prose, Rosen reveals key human experiences at risk of going extinct, including face-to-face communication, sense of place, authentic emotion, and even boredom. Considering cultural trends, like TikTok challenges and mukbang, and politically unsettling phenomena, like sociometric trackers and online conspiracy culture, Rosen exposes an unprecedented shift in the human condition, one that habituates us to alienation and control. To recover our humanity and come back to the real world, we must reclaim serendipity, community, patience, and risk.

The Extinction of Experience reveals the true cost of our digital age – and shows us how to return to the real world, while we still can.‘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 HAIDTHuman 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.In this insightful reckoning with modern life and its acutely modern malady, Christine Rosen leads us toward a healthier, wiser and more humane way.'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

With our success in mapping the human genome, the possibility of altering our genetic futures has given rise to difficult ethical questions. Although opponents of genetic manipulation frequently raise the specter of eugenics, our contemporary debates about bioethics often take place in a historical vacuum. In fact, American religious leaders raised similarly challenging ethical questions in the first half of the twentieth century.Preaching Eugenics tells how Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish leaders confronted and, in many cases, enthusiastically embraced eugenics-a movement that embodied progressive attitudes about modern science at the time. Christine Rosen argues that religious leaders pursued eugenics precisely when they moved away from traditional religious tenets. The liberals and modernists-those who challenged their churches to embrace modernity-became the eugenics movement's most enthusiastic supporters. Their participation played an important part in the success of the American eugenics movement.In the early twentieth century, leaders of churches and synagogues were forced to defend their faiths on many fronts. They faced new challenges from scientists and intellectuals; they struggled to adapt to the dramatic social changes wrought by immigration and urbanization; and they were often internally divided by doctrinal controversies among modernists, liberals, and fundamentalists. Rosen draws on previously unexplored archival material from the records of the American Eugenics Society, religious and scientific books and periodicals of the day, and the personal papers of religious leaders such as Rev. John Haynes Holmes, Rev. Harry Emerson Fosdick, Rev. John M. Cooper, Rev. John A. Ryan, and biologists Charles Davenport and Ellsworth Huntington, to produce an intellectual history of these figures that is both lively and illuminating.The story of how religious leaders confronted one of the era's newest "sciences," eugenics, sheds important new light on a time much like our own, when religion and science are engaged in critical and sometimes bitter dialogue.

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.'Fascinating and timely' OLIVER BURKEMAN'An extremely important book' JONATHAN HAIDT'Essential reading' KATHERINE MAY* A TELEGRAPH BEST BOOK OF 2025 * A GUARDIAN BOOK TO LOOK FORWARD TO IN 2025 *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.'Christine Rosen is one of America's best writers and thinkers' WASHINGTON EXAMINER