WRFH/Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM - Christine Rosen: The Extinction of Experience: Being Human in a Disembodied World

Episode Date: November 6, 2024

Christine Rosen is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where she focuses on American history, society and culture, technology and culture, and feminism. In The Extinction of Experience, Rosen investigates the cultural and emotional shifts that accompany our embrace of technology. She joined WRFH to discuss.From 11/06/24.

This is Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. I'm Nicole Sigiratau, and with me here today is Christine Razin, author of The Extinction of Experience Being Human in a Disembodied World. Christine is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. So our first question for you today is, why did you write this? What was your inspiration when you came up with the topic for this book? Well, I've been thinking about and writing about new technologies for several decades now, actually. It doesn't seem that long, but it is. And one of the things that struck me is that many of the old ways of doing things and the old habits of mind and the sort of human skills that my generation took for granted were starting to disappear.

So I started cataloging, taking notes, thinking through what are the things that might disappear that we wouldn't even notice because it was happening gradually or the ways in which technology was seeking to replace some of the old, old fashioned. face-to-face human interactions that we had come to take for granted. So, and the title of the book actually comes from an essay that's about natural history, which argued, a naturalist named Robert Michael Pyle, argued that children who grow up in a world where they have no experience of the natural world don't understand what it means when, say, a species goes extinct or a natural environment becomes degraded. And it got me thinking that in the way that we use technology to replace some of our interactions, we were also allowing certain human experiences to go extinct.

How are you recording these experiences that you notice? Were you journaling these down as you saw changes in society, or was it more so just internal thoughts that you collected? So a couple of ways. I do keep notebooks. I'm always jotting stuff down that I see. You know, if I happen to, sometimes it was something as simple as watching how people were behaving on the bus route I took or the or some advertisement for a new edition of the iPhone that I happened to notice. But I also over the years with some friends have started a journal called The New Atlantis. And in that journal, I would tackle larger issues such as, you know, how online dating was transforming courtship, how our individual and personalized technologies were changing

our expectations for each other and our, and for convenience. So I was doing sort of research and writing of essays in the New Atlantis, but also throughout my own day-to-day life, just trying to notice the way things were changing in small ways and large ways. Were there any individuals that you would talk to about this as you were noticing them to see if they also were picking up on these patterns? You know, the greatest people to experiment on were my own children. I have twin boys and watching. They're now 18 and in college themselves.

but for the last 18 years watching how the things they brought home from school, for example, I noticed that they were not spending a lot of time learning how to write cursive. So I started talking to other parents, some of whom went to my kids' school, but many of whom went to other schools. And in some cases found, wait a minute, their kids weren't even learning how to write cursive. They were only learning print letters. So that got me looking into how our standards for handwriting of change, what that means. So I would say raising children really was a, was a.

a gateway for asking a lot of these questions because their experience was so different from my own childhood and from the experiences of many of my older friends. So for me, that was very inspirational. Seeing the world through their eyes really helped me try to understand some of these changes. Very interesting. So you mentioned cursive specifically in writing. And I'm personally very interested in documenting things through writing and much less so through photos and video, even though that has its appeal. But I think this also kind of ties into your book, especially when you start talking about social media,

how we begin to brand ourselves with pictures and videos. So did you try to avoid documenting things through that digital process and really just focus more on the practical pen-to-paper aspect to help preserve the authenticity of it? Yes. So I made a decision in the early days. even pre-Facebook, I was studying sites like MySpace and whatnot and made the decision very early on based on the interviews I did with people who were working at early social media

companies and my own study of them, not personally to ever use social media. So I made, I had made that decision. This was, you know, a long time ago, I said, this is not for me personally. But then watching how it transformed, not just younger people who I think get a lot of flack for how they use social media, when in fact, often older people are even worse. in terms of how it changes their behavior. But I felt like it was important to do this the old-fashioned way in the sense that I'm trained as a historian. So I understand research and writing best.

That's what I do best. My background is doing archival historical research. So what I did is I went back and I reread a lot of the old technology theorists to sort of remind myself that many of these questions are not new. I have kept up to date on the academic literature on technology and communication and human behavior. And I just tried to study it and observe. So I do think that we lose some of that sense of grounding in text and grounding in history when we think that the world only exists if it appears online or if it appears on social media. So I really tried to make sure I was

looking at a wide range of sources, not just the ones that can be surfaced online. Absolutely. And in your research process, you mentioned a lot of reading past journals that had been written and then watching your boys. Were there any other practical forms of research that you did, like little social experiments? Yes, actually, this was really fun. It was a little mischievous, but I, so one of the chapters in the book is about how public space has been transformed by our use of technology. So I went to, in my own city here in Washington, D.C., I would go to different squares and public spaces and public settings, coffee shops on the national mall, all around and just watch people. And then I start, I would sometimes do little things like, you know, I stuck out my tongue at a guy to see if he'd notice, but he'd didn't because he was looking at his phone. I deliberately bumped into someone who didn't have his phone out and then also someone who did and noticed the difference in reaction. So these are highly subjective, not at all scientific experiments, but I wanted to test whether a lot of the literature I was reading about how social space had changed seemed legitimate. And I also went to New York and spent a lot of time in public spaces, you know, around the New York Public Library and in

Central Park. And there really was, especially I would go back day after day, several days in a row and then return a few weeks later. I really did try to get a sense of how the shifts were happening. And the one consistent thing I can say I constantly found is that people were checked out of their immediate physical environment and just staring at a screen more often than not. Wow, that honestly sounds pretty fun conducting those little experiments. It annoyed innocent members of the public for which I apologize. Just a reminder that this is Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. I'm Nicole Segueratow and I'm still talking with Christine Rosen. When we're talking about reality, since you kind of touched on that, in your book you

mentioned that a lot of people are replacing reality with one that is new and improved through virtual reality. In what other ways do you see this happening besides, obviously, through virtual reality. Like, are there other forms of media that it's pushing this? Yes. I think this is actually, I worry a little less about people checking out totally through VR, like wearing the goggles or whatnot, than I do about how we spend our days, how we spend our moment by moment, how we spend our time. And I would say the lack of a shared reality worries me in the sense that when you're together in public space, for example, with other people, you might not know them. You might not even want to engage with them, but we acknowledge each other. There are these weird unspoken rules.

Sociologists have studied them for a long, long time. You know, you make eye contact when a stranger steps into the elevator with you. It's a nod. It's a sign of shared circumstance. And it's also a way of de-escalating potential tension, making sure everyone feels safe. So when we stop doing those little tiny things, which seem innocuous, but actually are quite important for social trust, we change our reality in a significant way. So when I think, about how when we're all waiting in line, we all now stare at our phones, we fill every single moment of our free time with some form of entertainment or stimulation that's usually on the phone. That's not great for our ability to practice patience, to be thoughtful about others around us.

And I do think we see that in a large-scale form, in rising rates of anxiety, impatience, road rage, air rage, all of the ways in which as a culture, we've gotten sort of bad at just being good people when it comes to just basic decency. And I do indict the technology and our use of it for some of that, not all. It's not causing all of this, obviously. But it is a pretty significant factor and a pretty significant change in public space in particular, just in less than a generation. Absolutely. Yeah, I noticed the eye contact thing a lot. And just people always looking at their phones, would you advise individuals just to be more mindful of when they're using technology and maybe put or like try to challenge themselves to not be on their phone while standing in line?

Are there other ways that you would suggest that we start trying to combat this? Yes. I'm, you know, I'm a historian, not a not a advice person. So I always frustrate people when I write about this stuff because they're like, what's the solution? I'm like, well, the solution is the journey we took along the way, which drives people nuts. But actually, it's exactly what you say. Each person has a different threshold of tolerance for all of these things. But I did challenge a friend of mine who was arguing with me that he's very absorbent and very aware of his use of technology. I said, that's great. I'm sure you're right. Spend one day where you have moments of interstitial time, like waiting for the bus or waiting at a stoplight or just waiting, having to wait for something briefly, and do not pick up your phone. See if you can do that. See if you can be aware of that. And I, to his credit, he called me that night and he said, oh my God, I'm on my phone all the time.

And he said, he's like, it's just a minute here, a split second there. He said, but it adds up. And I said what you're losing when you're looking at your phone. Yes, maybe you see an important text or an email. It's not like this stuff isn't useful in a practical sense. It's like you're missing daydreaming. You're missing a lot of ways in which you can let your mind wander. And that's important.

We need to have that time where our minds can be still and fallow. and then start to wander. Daydreaming is a good thing. We seem to think we need to be efficient all day, every day, every moment of the day. And that's not necessarily true. It's not good for us in every situation. What do you say to individuals who, again, bring up the productivity aspect and say, well, it's rude of you not to respond to my email within a 24-hour span.

I mean, people will say to me, I know you were on your phone between this time and this time. Why didn't you respond to your text? How do you respond to that without being rude? Because quite frankly, my response is, well, I mean, it's also my personal time. And I will get back to you, but it may just not be at that exact moment that you text me. Well, that's a perfect example of the rather dramatic shift in expectations we have now of each other. And I would say my response, and I've had exactly the same accusation lapped at me, is to say, I'm not a machine. I can't respond instantly like a machine can. And we shouldn't. we're conforming to the technology rather than using the technology as a tool to help us have better, more flourishing lives. And I think the problem is, and this is part of why I wrote the book, is that very gradually our expectations for what the technology change, right? It's like we can have stuff on demand. I can order my food and it'll be here in 20 minutes. I can do all these things with a

press of a button and no, it's not a heavy lift for me to do it. I just have to be able to pay for it and have the technology. The different. is that when it comes to human beings, we cannot have that same level of expectation of another person because lives are complicated. We have many demands on our time. So I have really tried to cultivate a response that says, I understand your expectation is for on demand this, but I am not, I'm not the DoorDash app or an Uber app. I can't behave like an app. I'm a person. And so I try my best, but I'm not always going to be able to respond to you immediately. And I think it's important culturally that we start to shift back to that much more humane way of dealing with each other as

people, even as our technologies keep promising us, we should be able to have more and quicker and faster and on-demand. Absolutely. Just a reminder, this is Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. I'm Nicole Sierta with Christine Rosen. And we're going to talk a little bit more about social media. One of the things I noticed in your book that you brought up is people are becoming their own brands and brand managers through social media. How do you think this affects individuals in their day-to-day life with interactions with others? So my concern with social media use in particular, beyond what I think a lot of great, my friend John Haidt and others have done excellent social science research on the mental health effects of heavy use of social media and whatnot,

my concern is slightly different in that it changes not only how we project a self to others, but it changes how we understand ourselves. And this is what worries me because I think the development of a sense of self is one of those important life stages. It starts very early in childhood and you move through it in young adulthood. And by the time you're an adult, a healthy adult has a well-formed sense of self. It's like, this is who I am, this is what I believe. These are my values.

This is how I expect myself to act and interact with others. What social media does is two things. It completely homogenizes us in a weird way. we conform to the demand of the platform. I must look like this. I should filter my photo like that. I need certain number of likes to feel like this mattered. And what gradually happens for too many people, I think, is that we don't just document something to post on social media to show others what we like. We begin conforming to the demands of the platform and do things to be liked. And that is an important distinction because we start searching for approval, searching for attention in a venue.

that rewards attention but doesn't care if that attention is positive or negative. It doesn't care if people respond with rage, anger, and fear, or with puppies and rainbows and kittens. It doesn't matter. It's all neutral on the platform as it's just attention and reaction. So I think what it does encourage people to do because we spend so much time communicating, interacting, socializing on these platforms is that our behavior starts to shift our habits of mind, our expectations, the way we present ourselves conform to the machine rather than allowing the technology in the machine to help us be better people. Wow.

I think that's so true. I think so many people need to hear that today because I just don't, I mean, that danger is obviously so prevalent. And a lot of people don't realize how much they're changing to conform to social media, like you mentioned. One of the things I was talking about with my friends recently is she says that social media sometimes helps hold herself to a higher level. of standard because her so-called brand on social media then has to be continued in day-to-day life.

How do you feel about people who have that responsibility? And do you think that could be slightly helpful in them being productive and just holding themselves accountable in the long term? I mean, I think there are situations in which holding oneself accountable by saying to one's community, if that community is on social media, like, for example, I want to run marathon. I want to run a certain number of miles every week. Please hold me accountable. I'm going to log my runs. And if I fall short, remind me of my goal. Like that's a supportive thing where you're basically saying, I want to meet this goal, please be supportive. I think the danger with social media is that because

it's ubiquitous, people are using this all the time. And they're not just using it for defined specific goals. They're basically saying, this is my life. And here I'm going to show it all to you is that it doesn't give them what sociologists call a backstage area. Everybody needs a backstage area. And that's the place where usually in private, usually in our private sphere at home, we let down our hair, we act ridiculous, we have private conversations that we've never once shared. We talk about our likes and dislikes. We might even say things that aren't, you know, completely appropriate or do things that we wouldn't want others to know. We need that space as human beings. We need a backstage. The demands of social media do not allow for a backstage.

It wants everything on display. And the other thing that people should remember is that you're not just presenting yourself to the world. You're giving people an opportunity to judge you about every life choice you make. And you're giving technology companies a massive amount of information about your private thoughts, your feelings, your emotions, your behavior that they then sell in real time, not just to advertisers and to companies, but they can sell that. data to healthcare companies to credit companies who can then score you when you try to apply

for a car insurance or a home loan based on your activities on social media. So when you're doing this thing that you think is just innocuous or, you know, connecting to others or even, as you say, asking for some accountability and support, you're doing a, you're giving away a lot more information than you might realize. And there are sort of analog ways of doing that same thing, like set up a text chain with your five closest friends and say, I'm running a marathon, hold me accountable, And do it that way. Keep it a little more private, is what I would say. So I think we need to think, you can still make the choice to do that sort of thing on social media, but know what you're getting into in terms of the kinds of information you're sharing and the way you're eroding your own privacy and doing that. Absolutely. I completely agree with that. All right. One final question. So you talk about ads selling aspirational experiences. What do you think are the biggest dangers of this? Because in a way, aspirations can help you set goals and work towards achieving goals, which ultimately I personally do really well when I have goals that I want to achieve. But what are the dangers with ads specifically

trying to target you for these aspirational experiences? Yes. No, I mean, it's not bad to have a sort of sense of some ideal or wonderful experience dangled in front of you. I mean, I get these ads where I'm like, I do want to go to the coast of France and stay in a villa. I mean, of course, who wouldn't? I don't think there's much danger in that. A lot of that is just old-fashioned advertising. I think the difference with the technology that's at our disposal now is its power and its reach and the information it gives off about ourselves when we look at this stuff. So, you know, there have been moral panics about many technologies, you know, women reading novels, kids reading comic books. The difference with this technology is that the comic books and the novels didn't read us back and send that information to others.

That is what happens every time we click on an ad. The second danger is that the way these platforms are designed, the algorithms just keep giving us more of the same thing. So we can find ourselves very quickly, whether it's on social media, whether it's on Instagram Reels, any of these places that feed a lot of content 24-7 and encourage us to stay on the platform all the time, is it's giving us a worldview that's very much more of the same. So you're kind of living in your own reality. You can do that. And it becomes very difficult and jarring for people when they confront something outside of that. So whether that's, you know, everyone wears the same product. So again, the homogenization effect is one challenge, but more pernicious, I think, is this idea that, well, everything I see and here is telling me the same thing.

when they bump into someone who disagrees with them or who has different sorts of aspirations or experiences, it's harder for them to understand because it's so alien to their own experience in terms of the content they're seeing 24-7 all the time on these platforms. So that sort of bubble really does worry me, especially for younger kids who spend like, you know, seven to nine hours a day on these platforms. I mean, that's, or on some sort of screen consuming these images, consuming these ads. So that, the opportunity costs of not going out into the world and having experiences that are maybe uncomfortable, maybe unpleasant, maybe you have to be patient. Maybe you have to learn these life skills that actually do help you become a more well-rounded and grounded human being. Well, thank you so much.

I had a great time reading your book and I really learned a lot. So I would highly recommend it. It was so wonderful to talk to you and to get to learn a little bit more. Well, thank you so much, Nicole. I enjoy the conversation. All right. I've been Nicole Sigiratao with Christine Rosen, the author of The Extinction of Experience Being Human in a Disembodied World on Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM.