The Extinction of Experience: Being Human In A Disembodied World

Disembodied, Photograph, © Evan Kaufman

There is no getting around the fact that we are physical beings. We have bodies that consume and excrete. We have minds that feel and think and wander and dream. The experience of being a human in the world has historically been visceral, rich with real time sensory feedback. We’ve evolved for this type of stimulus and response, but our experience of the world is changing.

As Christine Rosen asks in The Extinction of Experience: “Has the primacy of the face and body as humans’ most powerful communication tool ended? And, if so, how do our interactions change when a skill evolution fitted us for—face to face communication—gives way to mediated forms of interaction” (31)? Rosen does not take the luddite position that we need to abandon new technologies, but she does think we ought to consider carefully and with intention the ways that newer technologies mediate, curate, manipulate and shape our experience.

Theorist of embodied cognition offer us frameworks for understanding how communication and meaning making may be inextricable from our physicality (59).  For example, nonverbal and postural cues in public spaces give us feedback both conscious and unconscious. Feeling the presence of others as we share space brings us together as part of a collective body, if only momentarily, can reduce feelings of loneliness and increase our sense of safety and belonging. So, what happens when the use of electronic technologies reduced proximity and increase inattention to the other humans that we share space with? One consequence Rosen identifies is an increase in civil inattention.

How many people do you see immersed in the world inside their headphones and iphones while walking the bike path? While sitting at a restaurant? Are you one of them? Small smiles, nods of the head and a sense of shared presence in public spaces are lost when attention resides inside our devices, often with undesired outcomes. Rosen offers examples of people needing assistance in a public space or being victimized while others walked pass, immersed inside their digital world.

The nature of how we learn through the life span is embodied. The rhythms of our breath, the speed at which our mouths and hands can express and the physicality of play are central to developing a sense of self and the world. Research suggests that children who engage in play-based methods of learning have better executive functioning, improved working memory and increased levels of self-control (74). Studies that have looked at brain patterns stimulated by typing vs. handwriting have shown enhanced word recognition and improved reading skills correlated with handwriting. As Rosen writes, “The pace of writing by hand, as with many embodied acts, is far slower than the tempo of tools that dominate modern life…the ease and efficiency of the keyboard trains us to move with efficiency, and the more we use it, the more our habits of mind reflect that use” (64).

Rosen dedicates an entire chapter to waiting and it has important implications for therapy. As anyone who has spent time in meaningful therapy knows, it involves good bits of silence, patience and waiting for what is most resonate to emerge from the noise of thoughts, feelings, sensations and stories. Rosen writes, “How we wait reveals our attitudes about silence and reticence, reflection and daydreaming” (82). Though the focus of Rosen’s chapter is about social and public kinds of waiting, queuing up in the grocery store or waiting for a ride at Disneyland, for example, our collective norms and experiences of waiting inevitably inform our more personal experiences of waiting: the frustration and failure that precede insight, the slow, unfocused moments that invite invention and recreation. And what about boredom? What space is there for process when content is ever present? Rosen writes, “In effect, our devices eliminate boredom not by teaching us how to cope with it but by outsourcing our attention so that we don’t have to cope with it” ( 95).  

Some studies cited in the The Extinction of Experience found that the ability to assess trustworthiness in another as greater in face to face interactions that in virtual interactions (35). Rosen distinguishes symbolic and written forms of communication from the so called “paralanguage cues such as the pitch, volume, and infection of the voice, and the range of haptic (touch) strategies we employ to convey meaning” (35) Though not always noticed explicitly or utilized directly with therapy, these communication cues are a cornerstone of the therapeutic relationship and are expressed in both conscious and unconscious ways by therapist and client to convey trust, urgency, safety, curiosity and empathy.  

While there is natural variability in the depth, frequency and nature of our engagement with digital technologies, it’s undeniable that we no longer go to them but that they have broken through to our embodied reality and are fundamentally reshaping our lived experience.

As Rosen names, “it’s not that these technologies live our lives for us…it’s that we are embracing a way of living in which there are increasingly few arenas where we don’t live our lives through these technologies and conform to the behaviors the technologies are designed to encourage” (174).   

For a time, it was enough to say off of social media or to put away the smartphone in the evenings. Now, so much cultural currency resides in tech that it’s becoming harder to navigate or make sense of the world and the other humans in it without our devices in hand. What do with this collectively remains to be seen. But for today, maybe go outside and talk a walk. The trees will speak to you. The birds with invite you into their endless territorial warring and perhaps you’ll meet the eyes of another human out there in the wild, breathing, wandering, wondering what happens next.