Reading and Reflecting: Thoughts on Christine Rosen’s The Extinction of Experience

Unpacking Mediated Experience

As I make my way through Christine Rosen's The Extinction of Experience, I’ll be sharing my thoughts and reflections chapter by chapter. This ongoing engagement aims to explore her arguments in depth, critique her framing where necessary, and draw connections to broader philosophical perspectives. Below, I begin with Chapter 1, where Rosen introduces her concerns about technologically mediated experiences.

Unpacking Mediated Experience: A Response to Christine Rosen’s The Extinction of Experience

In Chapter 1 of The Extinction of Experience, Christine Rosen begins by contrasting mediated and unmediated experiences, ultimately arguing that the rise of technologically mediated experiences is leading to a "withering of experience." While her concerns about the effects of digital technology on human life resonate with broader critiques of modernity, her framing relies on a problematic dichotomy between mediated and unmediated experiences that, as I’ll argue here, doesn’t hold up to philosophical scrutiny. Drawing on Ernst Cassirer’s philosophy of culture, we might see Rosen’s argument as not only overly simplistic but as missing an opportunity to explore the richness of human symbolic mediation—a cornerstone of our shared humanity.

The Mediated-Unmediated Dichotomy: A False Divide

Rosen suggests that technological mediation creates a barrier between us and “real” experiences. She contrasts databased moments—settling restaurant debates with Yelp, navigating with GPS, or “Googling” the answer to a trivia question—with an ideal of unmediated, direct experiences. For Rosen, the mediated experience is impoverished, alienating us from our embodied humanity.

Yet, Ernst Cassirer’s philosophy of culture provides a compelling rebuttal to this dichotomy. Cassirer views humans as “symbolic animals,” beings who experience the world not directly but always through layers of cultural and symbolic mediation—whether through language, art, myth, or, yes, technology. In this view, mediation is not a corruption of experience but the very condition of it. Even the seemingly “unmediated pleasures” Rosen valorizes—the taste of a meal, the thrill of a conversation—are mediated through cultural norms, personal memory, and symbolic systems of meaning.

Rosen's argument that "in pursuing these kinds of mediated experiences so zealously, we undermine our own humanity" seems to presuppose a conception of authentic human experience that exists prior to or outside of technological mediation. But if Cassirer is right, our humanity is precisely established through our capacity for symbolic mediation - we are cultural animals whose experience is inherently mediated through the tools and symbols we create.

By framing technological mediation as uniquely disruptive, Rosen ignores the universality of mediation in human life. Technologies like Yelp or GPS might alter how we navigate the world, but they are not categorically different from older forms of mediation, such as maps, books, or spoken traditions. All shape—and expand—our access to experience.

The Extinction Narrative: What’s Missing?

Rosen’s argument is animated by a nostalgia for a simpler, more “authentic” past, one in which human experience was supposedly more immediate and embodied. Her examples, however, often rely on cherry-picked anecdotes designed to highlight the worst excesses of contemporary digital life—a couple neglecting their child while raising a virtual one online, or individuals becoming consumed by conspiracy theories in the QAnon era. These examples, while troubling, are hardly representative of the spectrum of technologically mediated experience.

A more balanced critique would acknowledge the ways in which new technologies can enrich human life. For instance, virtual reality might enable someone who is disabled to experience places they could never visit physically. Social media, for all its flaws, has enabled new forms of connection and community-building across vast distances. To focus solely on the negative—on the “extinction” of older forms of experience—risks oversimplifying a complex reality. I’ll be curious to see if Rosen addresses these points in subsequent chapters.

The Problem of Unquestioned Dichotomies

Rosen’s critique rests on a series of implicit binaries that require more interrogation: mediated versus unmediated, real versus virtual, and databased versus undatabased. These distinctions are less stable than Rosen assumes. Consider her nostalgic celebration of “undatabased” experiences—paying for a meal with cash, or relying on a waiter’s recommendation rather than Yelp. These acts are not inherently more “authentic”; they are simply mediated by different systems of trust and meaning.

Furthermore, what does Rosen mean by “unmediated pleasure” or “direct experience”? Aren’t all experiences, including those with technology, direct in some sense? When someone listens to music on Spotify, they are having an immediate, embodied experience of sound, even if that experience is mediated by algorithms and streaming services. Rosen’s failure to grapple with this nuance weakens her argument.

The Role of Symbolic Mediation

Where Rosen sees technological mediation as an erosion of humanity, Cassirer might see it as a continuation of our deepest cultural practices. Technologies are not external to us; they are part of the symbolic systems through which we engage the world. This perspective invites us to move beyond the binary of “good” unmediated experiences and “bad” mediated ones, asking instead how new forms of mediation reshape—and potentially enrich—human culture.

For example, Rosen laments the decline of memory and serendipity in the age of Google and GPS. Yet these tools can also enable new forms of serendipity and knowledge. The ability to discover obscure films on a streaming platform or to explore the streets of a foreign city through Street View expands the horizons of experience in ways that are just as “authentic” as Rosen’s cherished memories of wandering without a map. To turn anecdotal myself, I recall trying to navigate Venice in a pre-GPS age and finding my experience of the city more than a little frustrating. What a different experience I had of the city when I could actually find my way around its many islands via the near-flawless mediation of Google Maps.

Conclusion: Toward a Nuanced Critique

Rosen’s concerns about the effects of technology on human life are valid and deserve serious consideration. Yet her argument in Chapter 1 of The Extinction of Experience is hampered by a false dichotomy between mediated and unmediated experiences and by a reliance on reductive examples. A more nuanced critique, informed by thinkers like Ernst Cassirer, would recognize that mediation is not a modern invention but a fundamental aspect of human existence.

As we continue through the book, I'll be interested to see how Rosen develops these themes and whether she engages more deeply with the philosophical complexities of human experience in a technological age. For now, I'm left wondering whether the real issue isn't the mere fact of technological mediation - which has been part of human experience since we first began using tools - but rather specific features of contemporary digital technologies that might be uniquely problematic.

These are complex questions that deserve careful consideration. While Rosen's opening chapter provides some provocative examples and raises important concerns, its reliance on questionable dichotomies and anecdotal evidence suggests we'll need to dig deeper to understand the real relationship between technology and human experience.

Next week, I'll share my thoughts on Chapter 2 as we continue exploring these themes.