Extinction of Experience: Being Human in a Disembodied World | Christine Rosen

In Episode 396 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Christine Rosen about her book, “Extinction of Experience: Being Human in a Disembodied World,” which explores the cultural and emotional shifts that accompany our embrace of technology and its effects on our experience of life as embodied human beings.

Christine is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where she focuses on American history, society and culture, and technology and human behavior. Rosen is also a monthly columnist for Commentary Magazine, one of the cohosts of the popular Commentary Podcast.

Demetri and Christine spend the first hour of their conversation focused on the philosophical and moral questions that arise from our unreserved embrace of virtual realities and mediated experiences. They explore questions about the nature of reality, how embodiment shapes experience, and whether the virtualization of our lives is the natural progression of our interplay with technology or if it represents something fundamentally different and profoundly immoral about the world we are building.

In the second hour, Kofinas and Rosen discuss the effect that these technologies and the logic that animates them have on our sense of self, agency, and freedom. They explore how time spent inside virtual spaces hosted on large tech platforms may be contributing to the rising levels of depression, anxiety, antisociality, and other mental and personality disorders that we may or may not recognize in each other and in ourselves. They also discuss what can and should be done, both at an individual and societal level, to begin to address the problem.

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00:00 Introduction
00:23 Guest Introduction
03:45 Background
11:42 Extinction of Experience
17:11 Experience in a Disembodied World
25:54 Role of Awe and Spirituality in Modern Life
29:05 Search for Awe in a Digital World
30:04 Mediated Experiences vs. Real World
31:24 Experience Machine Thought Experiment
36:26 Power Process and Modern Society
40:50 Impact of Social Media on Democracy
46:42 Trust and Misinformation in Modern Society
52:17 Topics for the Second Hour

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Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas

Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou

Follow Demetri on Twitter at @Kofinas

Episode Recorded on 12/17/2024