Esther
2026년 1월 22일
The book of March is Christine Rosen's <The Extinction of Experience>.
My work requires that I spend my days in conversation with children and young adults, often at a depth that reveals their hopes, wishes, and longings. Lately, though, I’ve felt something slightly askew in those hopes—perhaps because I am, without meaning to, measuring them against the shape of my own former desires. What I miss most about my younger years is not ambition but intimacy: the safety of being known among like-minded people, the quiet assurance of acceptance. I don’t know how, or even whether, that kind of longing translates into the lives of young people now. I’m not sure they would want the same thing.
This sense of distance sharpens when I watch them—eyes glazed, everywhere and nowhere at once—scrolling endlessly through their phones. It surfaces most clearly in the classroom, when we discuss serious literary works and I find that themes I once assumed to be universally intelligible—the shared furniture of the human condition—fail to land. I begin to wonder whether, in the near future, the phrase human condition will still point to the same thing across generations. Can you miss something you’ve never known firsthand? And should you?
The questions that trouble me appear neatly on the back cover of this book: What kind of person is formed in an increasingly digitized, mediated, hyperconnected, surveilled, and algorithmically governed world? What do we gain—and what do we lose—when we stop talking about the Human Condition and start talking instead about the User Experience? Someone, it seems, has already thought these thoughts more carefully, and arranged them more coherently, than I ever could.
It’s been a while since we last read nonfiction. Perhaps March—with its particular mix of hope and restlessness—is the right moment for a book that asks what, exactly, we’re becoming, and what we may already be nostalgic for. I hope you enjoy the read. See you in March.
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In The Extinction of Experience, Christine Rosen investigates the cultural and emotional shifts that accompany our embrace of technology. In warm, philosophical prose, Rosen reveals key human experiences at risk of going extinct, including face-to-face communication, sense of place, authentic emotion, and even boredom. Considering cultural trends, like TikTok challenges and mukbang, and politically unsettling phenomena, like sociometric trackers and online conspiracy culture, Rosen exposes an unprecedented shift in the human condition, one that habituates us to alienation and control. To recover our humanity and come back to the real world, we must reclaim serendipity, community, patience, and risk.
우리의 일상은 인공지능을 비롯한 디지털 기술의 터전이 되어가고 있다. 우리는 챗GPT에게 문서 요약을 맡기고, 비대면 미팅 플랫폼을 통해 소통하고, 소셜 미디어에 실시간으로 일상을 업로드한다. 현실과 디지털의 경계는 이미 무너졌으며, 이제는 기술로 매개된 경험이 인간의 직접 경험을 대체해 나가고 있다. 인간이라면 누구나 겪게 된다고 여겼던 핵심적인 직접 경험들, 예컨대 대면 소통이나 손으로 쓰고 그리는 일, 무언가를 기다리는 순간과 공공성을 감각하는 일 등이 멸종 위기에 처해 있다. 문화 비평가이자 역사학자인 크리스틴 로젠은 《경험의 멸종》에서 경험이 소멸하는 21세기적 현상을 탐구하고 그 소멸이 갖는 의미를 철학적으로 분석한다. 대중문화, 과학, 정치, 법률 등 수많은 사례를 탐사하는 로젠의 작업은 인간의 조건이 되었던 경험들이 사라져가는 지금, 우리에게 이 흐름을 전복할 지적 근거를 제공한다.
Sunday, March 29, 2026, at 5pm
Join us for an evening of camaraderie and intellectual stimulation. Admission is free, but attendance is restricted to individuals of college age and above. You can sign up for the meeting via Karrot (당근 모임) or secure your spot through Kakao (에스더어학원).
세종에 거주하고 있는 외국인을 포함해 교사, 강사, 회사원, 공무원 및 가사일을 하시는 분들에게도 원서독서를 장려하고 자유롭게 토론할 수 있는 문학적/문화적 소통과 교류의 공간이 되고자 합니다. 해당 책을 읽고, 영어로 소통이 가능한 대학생 이상의 성인에 한해 누구나 무료로 참석할 수 있습니다. 2026년 3월 모임의 책으로는 Christine Rosen의 <The Extinction of Experience>를 읽습니다.