--- Max Frisch, Homo Faber (1957), epigraph to the Introduction of Christine Rosen's The Extinction of Experience: Being Human in a Disembodied World (2023)
On p. 2, Rosen writes
By “technology” I mean the devices such as computers, smartphones, smart speakers wearable sensors, and, in our likely future, implantable objects, as well as the software, algorithms, and Internet platforms we rely on to translate the data these devices assemble about us. Technology also includes the virtual realities and augmented realities we experience through our use of these tools. Our integration of these tools into our daily lives has blurred the boundary between “virtual” things—things not grounded in physical reality that we encounter while online or via mediating technologies—and “real” things embedded in physical space.
And Rosen on p. 10
Behind the power we wield with our technologies is a timidity and aversion to risk. It's much easier to go with what Yelp or Google or Amazon suggest “other customers like you” might like than to squander your time money on a guess. But does this timidity lead to a quote withering of experience, quote as Theodor Adorno suggested in his analysis of the modern persons mechanized and homogenized approach to culture and leisure? In a world of digital experiences, do we any longer recognize any of them as ersatz?
Page 20
These platforms and tools have become our new character forming institutions. They have invaded the private world of existing institutions such as the family and become indispensable in the public world of work and leisure. Isn't something wrong when 53 per cent of sixteen-to twenty-two-year-olds around the world say they would rather lose their sense of smell than their favorite personal technology? (Cite Chris Gayomali, “Study: 53% of Youngsters Would Choose Technology over Sense of Smell,” Time, May 27, 2011, which cites a "McCann study surveyed a group of 7,000 young individuals ages 16 to 30 across several countries to gauge their interests in different categories (friends, celebrity culture, etc. etc.) to see what actually motivates them to, you know, do things.')
