January 7, 2025 • 49 mins
Christine Rosen is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, cohost of the daily Commentary Magazine Podcast, and the author of The Extinction of Experience: Being Human in a Disembodied World.
This wide-ranging discussion delves into the pervasive impact of technology on human experience, relationships, and societal norms. Drawing from themes in her book, Rosen critiques how digital devices and virtual realities have increasingly supplanted direct human interaction and embodied experiences. She reflects on societal shifts including rising loneliness, diminished face-to-face communication, and the normalization of screen-mediated interactions. The conversation addresses philosophical inquiries, such as philosopher Robert Nozick’s thought experiments on virtual reality and the risks of prioritizing simulated experiences over physical reality.
The conversation concludes with notes of cautious optimism about younger generations’ growing awareness of the trade-offs of technology. Rosen advocates for a more deliberate, community-driven approach to integrating technology, drawing inspiration from practices like those of the Amish. She calls for policies and cultural norms that prioritize humanity over convenience, aiming to preserve the richness of authentic human experience.
Recorded on November 20, 2024.
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Episode Transcript
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>> Peter Robinson (00:00):
Do we spend too much time looking into our screens and
(00:03):
too little looking into human eyes?
Christine Rosen on Uncommon Knowledge now.
[MUSIC]
Welcome to Uncommon Knowledge.
I'm Peter Robinson.
Christine Rosen is a senior fellow at theAmerican Enterprise Institute and a senior
(00:26):
editor at the New Atlantis, a regularcontributor to Commentary magazine, and
a cohost of the daily Commentary podcast.
She holds a doctoratein history from Emory.
Christine Rosen's most recent book,published this autumn,
the Extinction of Being Humanin a Disembodied World.
Christine, welcome.
>> Christine Rosen (00:46):
Thanks for having me.
>> Peter Robinson (00:47):
Christine, your argument.
Let's lay out the basics of the argumentfrom the Extinction of Experience,
I'm quoting here.
Our understanding of experience has becomedisordered in ways large and small.
More and more people create their ownrealities rather than live in the world
around them.
What do we lose when we no longertalk about the human condition, but
(01:08):
rather the user experience?
What do we lose?
>> Christine Rosen (01:13):
Well, I think we lose an important part of our humanity and
an understanding not only ofourselves as individuals,
but of our role in communities andfamilies, in culture.
And the title, although it sounds a littlebit portentous, Extinction of Experience,
actually comes from a naturalist, RobertMichael Pyle, who worried about children
growing up in a world where theydidn't actually experience nature.
(01:36):
They didn't get muddy,they didn't run around in forests,
they had no interaction with wildlife.
And then when they grew up,if a species, for example, went extinct,
would they care?
Because they wouldn't evenknow what they were missing.
And that essay really stayed withme because I started realizing,
looking around, and this includes myself.
So I'm indicting myself here, too, thatI was having experiences throughout my
(01:58):
daily life and watching othershave experiences via a screen.
So I was having look down experiences,not look up experiences.
And it was transforming the waywe all interacted whether you.
>> Peter Robinson (02:09):
I'm sorry, but
could you tell that story that youtell in the book, there was a rainbow.
You're in New York.
>> Christine Rosen (02:14):
Yeah, here, actually, yes.
>> Peter Robinson (02:16):
Sorry, go ahead.
>> Christine Rosen (02:17):
So, no, I had seen a performance at the Kennedy center.
>> Peter Robinson (02:19):
That is, it exactly.
>> Christine Rosen (02:20):
And it had been pouring rain, and we all went up to
the lovely roof terrace and thisgorgeous rainbow over the Potomac River.
And I was admiring it.
Every single person pulled out a phone andwas taking pictures.
And I completely understood that impulsebecause it's a really beautiful rainbow.
But they weren't just first stopping andexperiencing the rainbow with the people
(02:40):
they'd come to the show with, and theywere all immediately sending the pictures
and that moment, which for,it's fleeting, right?
A rainbow is a very fleeting andbeautiful, spontaneous thing.
They didn't pause to savor it.
And I wondered if that meant anything.
I think some people would argue,no, who cares?
And now they have a permanent memoryin the digital cloud of this thing,
(03:01):
which they instantly could share withmillions of their friends and followers.
But I think we do miss something whenwe don't pause to savor those moments,
because it makes us slow down, makesus think about what we can appreciate.
Doesn't have to be a rainbow.
It can be almost anything.
And it's getting harder and
harder to do that because the default nowis always to have the phone, always have
the screen, always have something tooccupy our minds and occupy our attention.
>> Peter Robinson (03:25):
Okay, again, from the extinction of experience.
This struck me as especially fascinating.
The philosopher Robert Nozickasked a simple question.
If we could create a machine that wouldoffer us the illusion of a life of
constant pleasure while alsoerasing from our memory any inkling
that we were hooked up to such a machine,would we choose to plug in?
(03:50):
The assumption has always beenthat most people will choose no.
We want to do certain.
Now you're quoting Nozick.
We want to do certain things andnot just have the illusion of doing them,
Nozick argued.
And then Christine Rosen adds,I'm not so sure.
And why do you add I'm not so sure?
>> Christine Rosen (04:07):
Well, I think this really struck me because Nozick's
experiment assumed a certain numberof things about what people valued
in their embodied human form.
Meaning, if you give someonean opportunity to do something in
simulated form, they might want to try it.
But they would still wantto have that experience,
ideally in an embodied human form,for it to be quote unquote real.
(04:29):
And I say quote unquote because I thinka lot of our sense of reality has shifted
dramatically because of the waywe can mediate experience.
An update to that experiment was reallyworrisome because they tweaked it
a little bit.
But one of the things that the people whoupdated Nozick's original experiment was.
>> Peter Robinson (04:45):
Nozick's original experiment is what, the 80s?
>> Christine Rosen (04:48):
Yes, I think it was in the early 80s.
>> Peter Robinson (04:50):
Okay [COUGH].
>> Christine Rosen (04:50):
Was to say, well, what if we gave you a pill and
basically made it easy?
You don't have to step into a machine and
remove yourself physically fromreality maybe it would just be.
You take a pill andit's very Matrix like, right?
If you've seen the movie the Matrix,this is the idea.
Would you plug in?
If you didn't, once you were plugged in,you didn't realize you were plugged in.
And more people, several generations on,said, well, I guess I would consider that.
(05:12):
I would consider livingin a virtual reality
rather than experiencingan embodied reality.
And that is the option fora lot of us throughout our daily lives.
Now we can forget that we havephysical bodies, we can live online,
we can live in virtual worlds,
have conversations with people all overthe world and never leave our homes.
(05:34):
So is that bad?
Well, if you look at rates ofloneliness and how much time,
particularly young people, spendphysically alone, not with other people,
I think there are some concerns andsome drawbacks to that trade off.
But to Nozick's point, I think it'sworrisome that people will now understand
their own reality differently if theydon't tie it to being in a physical body.
(05:56):
And a lot of folks in Silicon Valleywould argue, yeah, that's great,
we're gonna extend life.
We're gonna upload your consciousnesswhen you die, we're gonna live forever.
There are all these sort of schemes thatargue you shouldn't be limited by your
physical body.
But if you're conservative, which I am,I think our bodies teach us some humility
and lessons that we should attend to,even if we do have these tools.
>> Peter Robinson (06:16):
So this is so interesting.
I don't recall any passage in your bookin which you're explicitly theological.
But this is the old gnostic heresy,isn't it?
>> Christine Rosen (06:26):
Yes. >> Peter Robinson
trapped inside this body and if only wecould free ourselves from the physical.
Right.
>> Peter Robinson (06:34):
And that's not Judaism and orthodox Christianity
both insist that the humanbeing is both physical and
spiritual, that we of allof the creatures are both.
That there's somethingextremely profound about that.
Am I right about that?
>> Christine Rosen (06:53):
That's correct and in fact, I wrestled with.
I had a draft of a chapter about faith.
It became a little too complicatedperhaps [LAUGH] actually,
that's been one of the main requests forwhen it comes out in paperback.
But it was really difficult.
It became very theological.
But I found it extremely useful in guidingeven the secular argument about what it
(07:14):
means to be physicallyembodied human beings.
Because there are certain things thatwe cannot control about our own bodies.
And coming to terms with that ispart of becoming a whole person.
>> Peter Robinson (07:25):
Right, okay, so what is the, you mentioned a moment ago,
the rising rates of loneliness.
Beyond that, what are your fears?
Okay, so some young people are takinga little longer to get married and
have dates and so forth.
Tell me something I don't know.
>> Christine Rosen (07:45):
I worry about the lack of face to face communication.
That to me, that was sort ofthe motivating chapter in the books.
First chapter in the book,I guess the second chapter officially.
But I was noticing in my own life and
in my children's lives thatpeople were taking for
granted that having an interaction withanother human being means being physically
present and looking them in the eye andtrying to read their signals.
(08:07):
And there is a huge amount that we know,but
we don't know why weknow it as human beings,
we're evolutionarily to this point becausewe learned how to read each other's faces.
So if you cross your arms and glare,you might just be pondering something,
or you might be angry at me, butI know I can probably tell now.
>> Peter Robinson (08:25):
You can tell somehow, instinctively, immediately.
>> Christine Rosen (08:27):
Yes, but we're raising generations of young people now who
actually don't read the signals that,well, I think the lockdowns during
COVID where a lot of people hadto mediate through screens.
Suddenly brought this to the attention ofa lot of parents when kids were trying to
do school online and things like that.
But this is a problem foreveryone, adults included.
It's much easier and less risky notto deal with people in embodied form.
(08:51):
And again, this is, it's hard to,I can't cite data about this.
But I can tell you I've talked to lots ofpeople who work in public facing roles,
whether that's in diplomacy,
in business, in education, andthey all say the same thing.
Younger generations are havingto be taught these skills that
earlier generations took for granted.
So those of us who grew up withoutthese technologies, I'm Gen X, so
(09:12):
I'm the perfect hybrid.
I didn't have it as a kid, had a great GenX childhood where I drank out of a hose
and rode my bike around andwas never tracked by my parents.
But I had to adapt to the technologieswhen I became an adult.
Kids these days startout with these things,
and they live their worlds on a dailybasis through the technology.
And they don't practice other skills,those soft human skills,
(09:34):
learning to look at each other andinteract with each other and
negotiate with each otherwithout that sort of mediation.
And those are important, too.
And so, part of the book is a plea toremember that when we embrace technology
for some of these human interactions,there's an opportunity cost.
We do lose something, now,it might be worth it, but it's not always.
>> Peter Robinson (09:53):
Something is gained, but something is also lost.
>> Christine Rosen (09:55):
Exactly.
>> Peter Robinson (09:55):
All right, so
I just wanna push this a littlebit further because I'd like to,
I'm trying to figure out howfar you're willing to go.
You're being very, in fact,you say at one point in the book,
this book is a modest argument, or modest,I can't remember quite with the phrasing,
but you're charming, and modest,and reasonable, and so forth.
>> Christine Rosen (10:13):
Most of the time [LAUGH].
>> Peter Robinson (10:14):
Most of the time.
I'm trying to see if you're gonna say thisis responsible for the polarization and
screaming matches that wesaw in the last election.
Or I'm trying to see if I can get you tosay that you're angry about the effects,
or do you not wanna go there?
>> Christine Rosen (10:28):
Well, I'm very worried about the effects on the broader culture.
And it's not just because we don't knowhow to interact with each other like
decent human beings.
It's that we're really impatient as aculture because we have become habituated
to a life where we just have to tap orswipe or push a button and
get what we want on demand.
This is sold to us as our right, now,
if you read the advertisementsthat come out of Silicon Valley.
(10:51):
And while there's nothing wrong withconvenience, I think when we start to
apply it to other areas of lifewhere it's difficult to master and
improve life through convenience,like say, politics.
Which is actually about negotiation andcompromise and difficult long-term
questions, where you have to come upwith policy responses to problems that
you won't ever reap the benefits orrewards from the policy you're creating.
(11:15):
That's where I worry because I thinkit's very easy to just demonize and
get into a very comfortable positionbeing a moral grandstander.
If you're a politician, for example,
get a lot of positive feedback frompeople on your side for doing that.
And there really there's no risk involved,but our politics suffers.
So I do think we're bringing into Congressin particular a lot of people who
(11:38):
are there to be performative,
who are really speaking not to theirconstituents but to their followers.
And that is a very differentthing in a democracy.
We do not, our government->> Peter Robinson: Yuval Levin, didn't he
say that his phrase is that they're using->> Christine Rosen: It's a platform,
not an institution, yes->> Peter Robinson: That's exactly right.
So the institution's supposed to form them and
teach them how to behave, butinstead, if you use it as a platform,
(12:00):
institutional history, knowledge, there'sno need to respect that you're performing.
But I also think it means thatyou're speaking to your followers,
not to your constituents.
>> Peter Robinson (12:11):
Right, Christine, as I read your book, I thought to myself, there
is a pre-existing condition that Christineis not going into here, fair enough.
It's outside the scope of this book,but it comes to mind.
And so, if I may ask, this is a flyer,because these are questions not based
(12:32):
on your book, but just on the thinkingthat your book prompted in my head.
And the notion that,kids who are raised on technology,
the rising rates of loneliness,
that the kids are not justpicking up these iPhones.
The American family has alreadybeen under enormous pressure.
(12:55):
So this extinction of experience ishappening at a moment when all kinds of
bonds have already been broken and frayed.
And if I may, I'd just like to seeyou're mom, you're historian, you're
a journalist, you're a writer, you willhave given this some thought, I think.
>> Christine Rosen (13:13):
[LAUGH] >> Peter Robinson
in a few statistics,less than 20% of couples
who married in 1950 ended up divorced.
Since 1970, the rate has been about 50%.
The proportion of American children under18 living in a two parent home in 1960,
88%, in 1980, 77%, today,71%, steady decline.
(13:37):
The out of wedlock birth rate,this one is dramatic.
And here instead of raw figures, let megive you the famous 1965 Moynihan Report.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan was concernedabout, well, I'll quote it to you,
the fundamental problem, he's talkingabout a crisis in the black family,
the urban black family.
The fundamental problem isthat of family structure.
(13:58):
The black family in the urbanghetto is crumbling.
So long as the situation persists,the cycle of poverty and
disadvantage will continueto repeat itself.
The out of wedlock birth rate amongthe black family in American ghettos inner
cities, when he wrote that reportthat startled him in 1965 was 25%.
(14:18):
The out of wedlock birth ratetoday among whites is 27%,
among Hispanics 53%, andamong blacks is 69%.
So I have just,these statistics describe a catastrophe,
and it is into this catastrophe thatthese devices are being introduced.
(14:40):
What caused that catastrophe?
What caused so to speak,the pre existing condition?
Well, it's a tough question because there's, and it's-
>> Peter Robinson (14:50):
The dawn,,
I thought you'd have an answer.
>> Christine Rosen (14:52):
[LAUGH] I do not have a very simple answer to this, but
I have some ideas which I'll offer.
>> Peter Robinson (14:58):
And let it be noted for our viewers that I'm attack.
This is an ambush,this is not in the book.
>> Christine Rosen (15:05):
You're pouncing [LAUGH].
>> Peter Robinson (15:06):
I'm pouncing,
yes Republicans pounce[CROSSTALK] in real time.
>> Christine Rosen (15:10):
No, I think a couple of things have happened.
I mean look, the feminist movement andthe rise of women's education and
movement into the workforce wasa very destabilizing thing.
It was positive in many, many, many ways,
but it did place a newstrain on the family.
And I think that, if you look atfamily breakdown in particular,
you have to look at communities andat the community level.
(15:32):
And one of the things,if you remember Jane Jacobs and
others who talked abouteyes on the street.
So even if you're a child in a brokenhome in an urban setting, for example,
you had people, you had adults in yourworld who were looking out in general for
the kids in the neighborhood.
And that also disappeared fairly rapidly.
(15:53):
So you had people, cuz people worked.
People had to go to work,people were not on the street.
They were going into offices.
And so, you had a whole bunch of,Of kids who needed tending to,
but there weren't adults to do that job.
And enter first, television,then video games, and
then now you can take itwith you everywhere else.
>> Peter Robinson (16:12):
Television is sort of the first.
Television is different from radio,isn't it?
>> Christine Rosen (16:19):
It is. >> Peter Robinson
television, we begin to get thisargument taking very embryonic form.
Yes. >> Peter Robinson
it's with television, not radio.
Yes. >> Peter Robinson
when you're listening, there's somepart of your brain that's more active.
Anyway, that's my theory, but okay.
Well, and early technology critics like Neil Postman were
worried about the impactof television in the home.
But television, at least people did for
(16:41):
a long time gather around ittogether as a family, right?
Cuz it was expensive at first, so peoplecouldn't afford more than one television.
But I think forkids in these environments,
technology became a very cheap,useful babysitter.
And for lots of kids, it's actually saferto be in their house playing a video game
away from the streets than it isto be unattended in the streets.
(17:02):
So there are a lot of things that Ithink helped contribute to this crisis.
But I do worry about what we were promisedwith some of these technologies too.
If you think about the earlydays of the Internet, it was,
we're all gonna come together,we're gonna learn so
much about people all over the world andthis will make us better human beings.
And some of those promises were fulfilled.
There's a great vast amounts ofinformation that we now have access to.
(17:24):
I'm a historian,
I had to travel to archives toactually read people's letters.
And now a lot of those things are scannedand it makes it easier to do research.
But at the end of the day,it very quickly became a substitute for
a lot of things rather than just a tool,if you will.
And this is where the smartphonein particular very rapidly and
(17:45):
very detrimentally impactedour private worlds.
Because suddenly, you could be with yourfamily all together in the home, but
you could all be completely apart fromeach other mentally in terms of where your
attention was.
And you're also inviting into the privatesphere a lot of influences that
perhaps you might nothave chosen otherwise.
(18:06):
They're all there on the phone.
And I don't wanna soundlike a fear monger,
but it places a new burden ona family situation that as you
already described is feelinga great deal of strain.
So it adds to that burden.
>> Peter Robinson (18:19):
So if we could stick with this.
Well, this is fascinating to me,because 80% of the questions I ask,
I think I already know the answer,but these are real questions.
I can't figure this out myself.
A couple of quotations.
These are both a little long,but I think they'll pay off.
The late sociologist James Q Wilson,
(18:40):
he gave a very famous talk at AEI in 1997.
When the Department of Health and
Human Services studied some 30,000American households, it found that for
whites, blacks, and Hispanics, and forevery income level save the very highest,
children raised in single-parent homeswere more likely to be suspended from
school, to have emotional problems,and to behave badly.
(19:01):
Another study showed that whitechildren of an unmarried woman were
more likely than those in two-parentfamily to become delinquent,
even after controlling for income.
Even after controlling forincome, that's important.
Second quotation, sociologistsBradford Wilcox and Robert Lerman.
We estimate that the growth in medianincome of families with children would
(19:21):
be 44% higher if the United States enjoyed1980 levels of married parenthood today.
Further, 37% of the declinein men's employment rates
can be linked to the decreasingnumber of Americans who form and
maintain stable married families,close quote.
Children need families.
(19:44):
And we know this.
This is not a sectarian fact.
This is a human fact.
We know it.
Whatever our faith, Democrat,Republic, everybody knows this.
So why have we let this happen?
I mean, and these are the questionsthat are real questions.
(20:05):
Why have we let this happen?
And why did we just go through an electionin which neither candidate for President
of the United States breathed a wordabout strengthening the American family?
It is madness.
>> Christine Rosen (20:22):
Well, really, it was interesting to me that this is the first
election in which religiousfaith wasn't mentioned at all,
except for the fact that Kamala Harrisdidn't attend the Al Smith dinner.
No one asked them about their faith.
No one talked about faith.
No one talked about religious practices.
They talked a little bit here andthere about the religious vote,
depending on which swingstate you're discussing.
(20:43):
But that is new.
And I would add to your list of questions,or
perhaps->> Peter Robinson: No, no,
I ask and->> Christine Rosen: The
beginning of an answer.
>> Peter Robinson (20:50):
You answer.
>> Christine Rosen (20:51):
Let me try to give you an answer.
One of the other things that'sdeteriorated as the family structure has
deteriorated, leading to allthese second order problems,
is that parents now mistrust their ownjudgment about a great many things.
So you have this rise of a parentingexpertise class which changes its
advice left and right.
(21:11):
And you also have parents second guessingtheir own instincts because they do
not have perhaps, cuz they're havingchildren later and fewer in number.
And so they don't have this, again,a community of family members and
extended family whom they can rely on foradvice and everything.
So they turn to so-called professionals,some of whom have good advice.
(21:32):
You should listen to your pediatrician.
I think that's always a good idea.
But the anxiety over parenting as familysize shrunk is so intriguing to me.
And I think if you add technologyinto that mix, what you get are a lot
of anxious parents thinking,we're not doing what we're supposed to do.
All the experts are doing X, Y, or Z.
Maybe we can give our kids a leapfroglearning device because that's like
(21:56):
a computer.
And they need to knowhow to use computers.
>> Peter Robinson (21:58):
I wonder if we could track this.
You're about a generation and a half,maybe two generations younger than I am.
So as you're describing the neighborhoodsand the eyes on and so forth,
I'm thinking of the house I livedin when I was a little kid.
We lived there.
We moved when I was seven.
But I can remember that neighborhood.
All the moms stayed home.
(22:19):
Every single one.
All the fathers went off to work.
No family on our street had more thanone car, which meant that there were
arrangements made about->> Christine Rosen: Carpools, yeah.
Carpools, and who was going to go do the grocery shopping.
And babysitting was verythin on the ground.
So you went groceryshopping with your mom.
(22:40):
And when you went out to play,the door got opened and off you went.
And I remember no anxiety on my parents'part as long as I didn't go beyond the end
of the block in that direction orthe end of the block in that direction.
And every mom in every houseon that block knew me.
Now, there are all kinds of things aboutthat world that we don't want to return.
(23:04):
In particular,
there must have been, I think back onit now, there must have been a lot
of highly intelligent, capable women who->> Christine Rosen: A lot of wasted
talent->> Peter Robinson: Yes, exactly.
>> Christine Rosen (23:12):
In some of those kitchens [LAUGH]. >> Peter Robinson
this is not an argument forreturning to 1959.
All right, so what was it like for you?
Were things different bythe time you came along?
Well, I'm 51, so I was born in 1973 and-
>> Peter Robinson (23:28):
You child.
>> Christine Rosen (23:29):
[LAUGH] I was such a baby.
Yes, thank you.
But we were raised pretty free range.
We were free range kids andso we had a lot of freedom.
I knew everyone on my block.
I knew most of the neighbors.
There were->> Peter Robinson: So there was,
again, trust in the neighbors.
Trust in the neighbors. But
a lot of the moms worked at leastpart time, maybe a little more,
because they had to, including my own.
(23:50):
So we had a fair amount of freedom, but
there was also a sort ofthrown together thing.
Most of the babysittingcame from relatives.
I'd go stay at my grandma's whenmy parents wanted to go out.
But the real distinction, the huge shift,I think, from even that childhood,
a Gen X childhood,to millennial childhood.
And now for the Gen Z ers andGen Alpha coming up behind them,
(24:11):
is that they are more likely.
And this includes their parents now too,they're more likely to know the name of
a YouTube star or an influencer thanthey are to know their own neighbors.
And I think the isolation that wesee among Americans, we see it in
the loneliness data but there's alsoother ways that I think it comes out.
The enthusiasm for living one'slife online comes from this too,
(24:33):
connecting to people in yourneighborhood used to be a given.
And now it's really not so
much of community life thatused to happen in person.
Whether it was the oldRobert Putnam bowling leagues or
any of the other ways in whichwe measure social cohesion,
though a lot of thosethings did move online.
If you look at how we played games,
we had one kid whose parentscould afford an Atari.
(24:56):
So we'd all go to his house andtake turns playing Pong, I mean,
if any of you know Pong, it's rather.
>> Peter Robinson (25:01):
I remember Pong.
>> Christine Rosen (25:02):
It's a very slow moving game by today's standards.
>> Peter Robinson (25:04):
By today's standards.
>> Christine Rosen (25:04):
But again, it was a communal thing we were all physically in
the same space that'snot how anyone games.
Now they're talking to eachother on their headsets, but
they're alone in their ownhome in different places.
So we've just shifted how we socialize anda lot of that is now mediated.
So setting aside the privacy issues ofthe amount of data being collected on
our private activities.
When we do that, which is a whole otherdebate, I think it's also led to a very
(25:27):
fragmented sense of community fora lot of young people.
And this is why when they are thrown intotheir first jobs or go to college for
the first time, they struggle, how do Imake friends, how do I find my group?
It's not true of all kids, but I thinkwe've seen enough of a generation raised
with these technologies that theywill acknowledge the struggle.
I see it in young employees I work withand in my kid with my kids friends.
>> Peter Robinson (25:50):
So, James Q Wilson, one more time, I'm sorry,
I'll bring you right back into the book->> Christine Rosen: Please James Q Wilson
trumps me [LAUGH] I heard that speech,by the way.
You were there for that.
>> Christine Rosen (26:00):
[INAUDIBLE] Wonderful.
>> Peter Robinson (26:01):
You were only 13, by the way.
>> Christine Rosen (26:03):
97 [LAUGH].
>> Peter Robinson (26:05):
James Q Wilson,
I think this is from the same speechthroughout the Western world.
Political and intellectual Eliteshave abandoned interest in or
acquired a deep hostility to the forcethat has given meaning to Western life.
To a degree, this was understandable, wehave done more than end religious warfare,
he's talking about religion.
>> Christine Rosen (26:23):
Mm-hm. >> Peter Robinson
end religion itself, thereby subjectingmuch of mankind to a new form of warfare.
The hopeless struggle of lonelysouls against impulses they can
neither understand nor control.
Now, the speech was about the breakdownof the American family, and
he put religion right at the center of it.
So these two things that just baffle me,
(26:47):
why doesn't we all feel it?
Mm-hm. >> Peter Robinson
as, very few people are as articulateas you, but we all, we see isolation.
We are all nervous about whatis happening with our kids and
grandchildren picking up.
I don't understand why this doesn'tmake its way into politics, and
(27:09):
you raise this point whichhadn't occurred to me, but
again, religion is now no longereven spoken of, so why not?
We've lost the ability to even speak in the language of virtue,
because what we're circling aroundhere is virtue, character formation.
That's what gives people a senseof purpose, a sense of meaning,
a sense of understanding where theybelong in the world that they live in.
(27:32):
And I think what you see and
technology has offered the promise ofthat in digital form to a lot of people.
Your daily life is isolating andalienating, find community online,
you can game with your friends,you can do all these things.
But I think we've experimented with thealternative, with technology long enough
(27:53):
to say that the simulation is not the samething, qualitatively, it's different.
It doesn't actually inculcatethe kinds of virtues that we want,
it inculcates habits of mind thatactually undermine virtue because they
reward impatience, a sense of the now.
There's no respect for historical norms,there's no respect for
(28:14):
how things can taketime to really develop.
Talk to anyone who online dates,they will tell you this, the time and
space it takes to really get to knowanother human being has disappeared
because now we have todo it through an app.
Now, of course,not everybody, it's a choice.
[INAUDIBLE] But it becomes the norm, itbecame the norm very quickly, and that's
where I think technology is a very usefuland powerful thing in a lot of ways.
(28:38):
But when we invite it into ourmost intimate relationships and
it starts to teach us habits of mindthat develop certain character traits,
then we are using it to inculcatevery different things from virtue.
>> Peter Robinson (28:50):
So we know that a little kid the first things,
not the first things, because it takesa lifetime in some ways to learn them.
But when children are children,in teaching virtue,
basic character, and so forth,you need to learn two things above all.
Impulse control andhow to get along with other people, and
you will learn neither ofthose in the digital world.
>> Christine Rosen (29:11):
Right. >> Peter Robinson
Yes [LAUGH] There is not an app for either of those things, and
I think both of those things are alsowhat is lacking in our politics.
Politics is fueled by impulse control andan inability to get along and compromise,
because those are not rewardedin our culture these days.
>> Peter Robinson (29:29):
All right, now, Christine, there's a counterattack,
this is Marc Andreessen, andit's his concept, by the way.
I have to stipulate that Marc Hendersonis actually, a friend of mine.
>> Christine Rosen (29:38):
Okay, so sorry, it passed legal vetting.
>> Peter Robinson (29:41):
[LAUGH] I'm sure, in fact,
he will be flattered to hear you take him.
>> Christine Rosen (29:46):
[LAUGH] I'm not sure he'll be flattered by how I characterize
his argument, but let's hope so.
[LAUGH]>> Peter Robinson: So he writes about
reality privilege, and I'm quotingyou quoting, this is in your book,
you take him on in the book.
Yes.
>> Peter Robinson (29:57):
A small percent of people live in a real-world environment
that is rich.
Even overflowing, with glorious substance,beautiful settings, plentiful stimulation,
and many fascinating people to talk to,to work with, and to date.
And not dating, you're already a mother,but everything else is a fellow at okay?
(30:18):
Everyone else continues, Marc Andreessen,
the vast majority of humanitylacks reality privilege.
Their online world is orwill be immeasurably richer and
more fulfilling thanmost of the physical and
social environment around them,in the quote-unquote, real world.
(30:38):
Your real life may be richenough to satisfy you, but
there are a lot of people whoselives would be better online.
The answer to the problemis not less digital,
not more real experience,but more digital.
Supplanting real experience with richer,better, more beautiful,
(30:59):
more pleasant digital experience,and Christine Rosen says.
>> Christine Rosen (31:03):
[LAUGH] So now you'll see the rage come forth,
this bothers me to my core fora number of reasons.
First of all, I'm sure Marc Andreessen isa very nice person who has a very lovely
life, and good for him, he's earned it.
But the argument->> Peter Robinson: He's
a very nice person.
I'm sure he is.
>> Peter Robinson (31:18):
You stipulate it, I confirm it.
>> Christine Rosen (31:20):
[LAUGH] Okay, good, but the argument that what we owe each
other, is for the people whose livesare terrible, the only thing we can do for
them is to give them this simulated world.
Where they can slap on VR goggles thatpeople whose companies Andreessen will
reap great benefits from having investedin will give them everything they want.
That is an unfree that is not a choice,and
(31:42):
that is a dystopian science fiction novel.
It was called Ready Player One,and I think it's dystopian for
a number of reasons.
It takes away the idea of moral agency andfreedom for
the people who you slap the VR headset on,
and suggesting that it's a choice that'sbetter for them is condescending.
In the extreme, it also would very quicklylead to a world where there were these
(32:04):
huge class disparities in terms of whocould live their nice reality privilege
life and who would live the VR life.
And we do already see glimmers of thisin how some of these technologies
are being used.
So if you don't have great healthinsurance, you might be offered,
if you have a mental health issue, achatbot to talk to, not a human therapist.
If you have good health insurance,you can go talk to another human being and
(32:26):
have nice psychotherapy session everyweek and probably get better sooner.
So this two-tier way, this idea thatsome people deserve human contact and
human attention, andother people should be satisfied
with a simulation of itbothers me in the extreme.
Because it's the most vulnerablepopulations who get that first, children,
the elderly and the sick and the poor.
Those are the people he's talking aboutwhose realities are challenged but
(32:49):
our obligation to each otheris to improve their reality,
not to give them somesimulation of reality.
And that's to say nothing aboutthe mental health crises and
the physical crises thatthis would make much worse.
Because if you sit all day with VRgoggles on [LAUGH] what happens to
your actual body?
We know rising obesity rates, all kindsof health issues in this country,
(33:09):
much of which comes from the factthat we're very sedentary and
our bodies are meant to move.
So I take issue with nearly every part ofwhat he says there because I think it's
a very pessimistic way to seethe future of humanity and
I don't think it's what he would want forhis own children.
A lot of people in Silicon Valleywon't allow their kids
to use the products that they devise foreverybody else and
(33:30):
I think there's a truth therethat should be acknowledged.
So I think that's just way toopessimistic a way forward for humanity,
and I would strongly oppose it [LAUGH].
>> Peter Robinson (33:41):
And I see a new show here, we can get you and
Mark to sit down and debate.
>> Christine Rosen (33:45):
I would love to debate him [LAUGH].
>> Peter Robinson (33:48):
So what should we do, again, from the extinction of experience,
a decade ago, a book about how technologyis changing us would offer solutions for
a more balanced relationshipwith our devices.
Such as take a digital sabbath,one day a week, no digital devices,
avoid multitasking, andput those phones away at the dinner table.
(34:12):
These are no longer enough,we need to be more like the Amish
in our approach to technology,well now, what on earth do you mean?
>> Christine Rosen (34:24):
So I said this a little tongue in cheek, but only a little,
so I'm not saying give up your zippers andturn off your electric lights,
but the Amish approach to technologyis very aware in this sense.
They're not against all technology butwhat they do when something new arrives is
sit down as a community andask a bunch of very important questions.
(34:45):
How will this change family life,
what will this do tothe private space of the home?
Does this open our community up to valuesand ideas that would undermine what we
think is important, and is this somethingthat we really do need, or is it a want?
And there are many,many other questions each group asks but
I think that very thoughtfulway of approaching technology,
(35:09):
we didn't do that withsocial media platforms.
And we're in a bit of a mess now in termsof how they've impacted our kid's mental
health, our politics,our culture in lots of ways.
And I think we're starting to have thatdiscussion a little more now that AI has
come onto the scene, andthat's all for the good.
There's a lot of fear mongering, there'sa lot of ignorant discussion about AI, and
(35:30):
there's a lot of confusionabout what AI even is.
But I am heartened by the fact that peopleseem to have learned a bit of a lesson
from just uncriticallyembracing each new thing and
this is where I becomedeeply conservative.
Every new thing is not an improvement,if you study history, you know this.
And I think this is one of the thingswhere we have been just absolutely dazzled
by what our technologies can do forus and the power and sense of control and
(35:53):
convenience they offer us that we'veforgotten to ask those important questions
about some of these new tools.
And we must do that if we're goingto have a flourishing culture and
politics and family and community life.
>> Peter Robinson (36:07):
So if we started with my generation, we went to your generation,
if it's not, if I may,your twins who are now in college.
>> Christine Rosen (36:16):
Yes, they're freshmen in college.
>> Peter Robinson (36:18):
And did you forbid them from, how did you raise them?
>> Christine Rosen (36:20):
So they- >> Peter Robinson
if I may ask.
No, you may, and they will bitterly complain about it still,
although they're coming around,at zero to five, they had no screens.
Because I started studying this stuff morethan 20 years ago, before I had kids.
I was studying Myspace andthe early social media platforms and
talking to early Facebook employees andresearchers.
(36:42):
And I was very worried about the way theytalked about what they were doing cuz they
didn't talk about, hey, we want to createthis thing that makes life more fun.
It was we want to control human behavior,we want to know everything about you.
And their intentions were still good,make a good profit, grow,
do all these entrepreneurial things,give people a platform, but their absolute
(37:04):
fascination with human behavior struck meas something that was worth following.
And I think it's proven to be a realchallenge as they try to explain
the harm some of their tools have done.
For my kids, yeah, zero to five,no screens, no tv, no computers, nothing.
They were, but I guess they were Amish,[LAUGH] although they did have zippers.
(37:25):
But once they were five years old,I allowed them to watch children's,
I think they watched the Lion Kingwas the first thing they ever saw.
But by that point they were reading andwhen they saw something, what interested
me is that with their peer group whowatched a lot of stuff much earlier, and
no judgment, people have to maketheir own choices with their family.
I've become very libertarian about thisin terms of the choices people make.
(37:45):
But they would watch something scary, andit wouldn't scare them because they were
old enough to have like, they'd readstories, had stories read to them.
They hadn't seen anything super scaryon the screen and so it wasn't that
alarming to them in quite the same way,which I thought was fascinating.
They were big Minecraft fanaticsas they got into middle school,
so they had rules for that, they didn'tget smartphones till nineth grade.
(38:09):
They were among the last in their group,I really did hold out, and
God bless them,they hated every minute of it, but
they are able now to reallybe aware of their use.
Doesn't mean they're perfectlygood at controlling it but
one of my sons spent a monthhiking in Wyoming with no phone.
They had a sat phone in case a bearattacked, and he came back from
(38:32):
that experience and he said, wow,I waste so much time on my phone.
And so,>> Peter Robinson: He admitted that
to his mom.
Totally, of course, I was patting myself on the back, he's like,
don't say it.
So I didn't,[LAUGH] I didn't say I told you so.
>> Peter Robinson (38:43):
And we'll edit that out.
>> Christine Rosen (38:45):
[LAUGH] No, but
I think that their awareness of howmuch time they spend on it, even
though they're pretty disciplined, andit's very different for boys than girls.
I think for girls, so much more ofsocial life happens on social media and
on the phone and it's different andmore difficult struggle.
My friends who, I have a niece, butalso my friends who have daughters,
(39:06):
talk to me about this.
So I was pretty draconian and even still,
I am sure that they found stuff ontheir discord servers and whatnot,
where they were all chatting thatI would be horrified to know.
I kind of as they get older, they tell memore things about what they saw when they
were 12 or 13, and I'm alarmed.
But I think, though,
(39:27):
I was lucky in that I did a lot of mywork from home, and I also had twins.
So as my economist friends say,
they would start to play witheach other at a certain age.
So they entertained each other and in thatsense, I was able to keep them occupied
without a screen, butthat is not possible for a lot of parents.
You can't cook dinner and get stuffdone around the house without having
(39:49):
some way to keep your kids occupied.
>> Peter Robinson (39:51):
You said, I was very struck about the Amish,
the notion that the communitymakes decisions, so we have a new.
Chief executive about to take office and
the 119th Congress isabout to take office.
Is that even, I have a question here,
what would you say toDonald Trump about all of this?
(40:11):
If you could tell him anything at all,advise him in any way you wished, and
the guarantee was that hewould actually listen.
But I'm not sure that's even the rightlevel at which these kinds of
decisions should be made yet.
Do you want our politicians to do oris there something you'd say
to Donald Trump orto the leaders of the incoming Congress?
>> Christine Rosen (40:32):
So as a conservative, I tend to think most top-down federal
solutions are gonna justcreate more problems.
But with one exception here, andthis is actually broadly bipartisan, and
you will see legislation co-sponsoredby Katie Britt of Alabama and
John Fetterman of Pennsylvania.
These two agree on very little,but they came together to
(40:53):
sponsor legislation about enforcingan age limit for social media use.
And that is one area where I think policyhas, there's enough cultural momentum
now and enough understanding ofthe damage caused when a nine or
a ten-year-old spends hours a day onInstagram looking at stuff that was
designed for adults andreally quite harmful.
(41:13):
And so I think parents have borne thisburden for too long because the answer
was, well, you're just a bad parentif you let your kids see this.
But it is everywhere, it is ubiquitous and
it is very difficult unless you canget a very committed group of parents
all together to commit not to have theirkids have a smartphone till 8th or
9th grade andnot commit to use the social media stuff.
And that's really a heavy lift whensomething is damaging to children.
(41:35):
This country has generally historicallybeen really good about coming together and
saying, you know what, that's wherethe government has a role to protect.
We've done it with alcohol andage limits, we've done it with driving,
you have to get a driver's licensein order to operate a car,
all kinds of ways in whichthis is something we do.
And it's time to now enforce what'salways been on the books but
never really enforced againstthe technology companies.
(41:57):
The burden should now be on the technologycompanies to enforce an age limit and
they should be punished if they do not.
Just like we would close down a shopthat was selling alcohol to minors.
And that is a shift that on both sides ofthe aisle now in the House and the Senate,
there are different bills, butthere really is momentum now for
this to become the law, the land.
So in that sense, I think federallegislation would set a standard that then
(42:21):
the companies have to meet.
>> Peter Robinson (42:23):
And what about at the state level?
I'm thinking of, I'd never putthese two together before, but
I'm thinking now of the schoolchoice legislation.
The latest news is that Texas now hasenough legislators that Governor Abbott
believes that they'll beable to enact school choice.
And I'm conscious of reading,not in a systematic way,
I haven't studied it the way you have.
(42:44):
But I'm conscious of reading that thisschool, that school, the other school,
has announced either no phone, no digitaldevices in the classroom, or asking
parents to sign digital device bans excepton weekends, something of this nature.
It feels as though that's gonnabe easier in private schools or
religious schools than inlarge public operations.
(43:04):
So possibly school choice might makeit school choice legislation that makes
it easier for parents to send theirkids to schools they want them to attend
might dovetail with this greater,greater willingness to say no, really.
What it comes to, isn't it?
>> Christine Rosen (43:21):
Yes.
>> Peter Robinson (43:22):
Is it really adults saying no, holding the line?
>> Christine Rosen (43:25):
Yes, somewhat although so much of life now occurs on the phone.
I mean, I wasn't able to parktoday without an app for
my phone [LAUGH], right?
I mean, so much of life is nowfunneled through apps that
you actually can't escapeit even if you want to.
And in the educational environment,that's very true for kids.
Some kids get, even in public schools willget an iPad when they enter kindergarten.
>> Peter Robinson (43:45):
And you've given them as part of.
>> Christine Rosen (43:46):
Yes, because the tech companies have given it all to the public
schools for free and say,why don't you use all our great stuff so
they can also hoover up a vastamount of data on your kids.
All anonymized we're reassured but[LAUGH] that's another debate.
But I would say this about that,
that's actually a perfect example ofconservative principles in action.
Organically, communities are sayingsomething's not working here.
(44:06):
What can we do?
What sort of solutions can we have?
You have these bell to bell bans thatare happening, so from the morning bell.
>> Peter Robinson (44:12):
Bell to bell.
>> Christine Rosen (44:12):
Yeah, the bell to bell ban of cell phones, I think that's great.
I think though this is, and I'm no fan ofthe teacher's unions, but this is actually
a place where conservatives who careabout this, liberals who care about this,
should sit down and talk to the teacher'sunions and get them on board too.
Because teachers don't like thesedevices in the classroom either,
they distract their students,
they're competing with whatever's on the->> Peter Robinson: Is gonna get behind you
(44:34):
on this one.
Well, here's hoping.
I doubt it because I don't think shereally does have the best interests of
America's children at heart,despite what she's often claiming.
But parents and teachers all knowthat this is what would help kids.
So I think we see those movements,we see a real effort to make that happen.
That's from the bottom up,
(44:54):
that's how I tend to prefer thissort of social reforms happening.
But I think if you have legislation inplace that says these companies are gonna
be held accountable when they letunderage kids on their platforms that
are designed for adults.
And you have this parents' movement, and
you've got my friend Jonathan Haidthas written an excellent book,
Anxious Generation,about the mental health impact.
>> Peter Robinson (45:12):
And Abigail Shrier.
>> Christine Rosen (45:13):
And Abigail Shrier has done wonderful work on this.
I mean, people are listening to this now,and so there is momentum.
And so if you have both of thosethings happening at the same time,
I think we will see some,that's how cultural shifts happen,
you can't just do it from the top down.
And if you're working from the bottom up,
you often will butt heads with rules andregulations that are out of date.
>> Peter Robinson (45:33):
Okay, so last question Christine, are you optimistic?
And I'm not asking a question aboutyour obviously optimistic character,
your personality.
But do you think that by the timethose twins of yours have given
you grandchildren,let's put it off in the distance.
They just started college, so
we're talking about a decade from now,let's say that norms and
(45:57):
protocols will have been established andwill have become accepted.
Of course, at the same time, on the onehand I'm saying, norms and protocols,
well, they have emerged that helpcontrol the use of digital devices and
ensure that we don't extinguishour own human experience.
Of course, at the same time thatthis decade is taking place, and
(46:18):
these norms and protocols may begin toemerge and just the way you suggested,
AI is coming at us like a tsunami.
>> Christine Rosen (46:25):
Mm-hm.
>> Peter Robinson (46:26):
So are you optimistic or
is there just gonna be little pocketsof communities like the Amish?
>> Christine Rosen (46:33):
Mm-hm.
>> Peter Robinson (46:34):
Who just are able to hold the line against the sort of digital
debauchery of the modern world.
>> Christine Rosen (46:42):
So I would call myself cautiously optimistic for two reasons.
Watching Gen Z move into adulthoodhas given me some room for optimism.
>> Peter Robinson (46:52):
It has.
>> Christine Rosen (46:53):
So they do things like they'll all go out to eat and
everyone has to put their phonein the middle of the table,
and whoever picks up their phone duringdinner to check it has to pay the bill.
So they kind of lash themselvesto the mast of the ship.
And they're doing it because they know howintrusive everyone looking at their phone
and how fracturing of attention andcamaraderie it is to do that.
(47:14):
So they have to deliberately make thatchoice, and they do make that choice.
They're exploring more analog things.
There's this resurgence andkids wanting vinyl records and stuff,
which I think is sweet,but not a whole trend.
Another thing though,they are wildly independent.
They are independent in terms oftheir registration as voters, and
they will move one way or the other,depending on what they believe.
(47:35):
But they also resist being told what todo in a very healthy and skeptical way.
So if you think about in the employmentspace where you're gonna have a lot more
monitoring and surveillance of employees->> Peter Robinson: Yes, of course.
They are a generation that brings into,
with their experience growingup with digital technology
just a healthy skepticism, which hopefullywon't curdle into cynicism or nihilism.
(47:58):
Where if a boss says here, put on thisbadge and you'll get $25 off a month on
your health insurance if you let ustrack what you do outside of work,
how many steps you take.
I think a lot of Gen Z, look,my generation and millennials were like,
okey-dokey, andoff they went being tracked.
That is not Gen Z, they are resistant insome ways to that sort of surveillance
because they have been watchedtheir whole lives by their parents,
(48:22):
by media, by companies thatare constantly trying to sell them stuff.
So they have a skepticism.
My concern is that thatcurdles into cynicism.
We don't want it to be cynicism, we wantthem to actually act on that skepticism
and to reform these platforms andto make new things.
New things that actually reflect theirvalues not that first generation of techno
(48:43):
enthusiasm that was uncritical aboutwhat it might do in terms of harm and
opportunity costs.
>> Peter Robinson (48:48):
Got it.
Christine, may I ask you to close ourconversation by reading a passage from
your book?
>> Christine Rosen (48:54):
Yes, if we are to reclaim human virtues and
save our most deeply rooted humanexperiences from extinction,
we must be willing to placelimits on the more extreme,
transformative projects proposedby our techno enthusiasts.
Not as a means of stifling innovation, butas a commitment to our shared humanity.
(49:14):
Only then can we live freelyas the embodied, quirky,
contradictory, resilient,creative human beings we are.
>> Peter Robinson (49:23):
Christine Rosen, author of the Extinction of Experience.
Thank you.
>> Christine Rosen (49:27):
Thank you.
>> Peter Robinson (49:29):
For Uncommon Knowledge, the Hoover Institution and Fox News,
I'm Peter Robinson.
[MUSIC]
Do we spend too much time looking into our screens and
(00:03):
too little looking into human eyes?
Christine Rosen on Uncommon Knowledge now.
[MUSIC]
Welcome to Uncommon Knowledge.
I'm Peter Robinson.
Christine Rosen is a senior fellow at theAmerican Enterprise Institute and a senior
(00:26):
editor at the New Atlantis, a regularcontributor to Commentary magazine, and
a cohost of the daily Commentary podcast.
She holds a doctoratein history from Emory.
Christine Rosen's most recent book,published this autumn,
the Extinction of Being Humanin a Disembodied World.
Christine, welcome.
>> Christine Rosen (00:46):
Thanks for having me.
>> Peter Robinson (00:47):
Christine, your argument.
Let's lay out the basics of the argumentfrom the Extinction of Experience,
I'm quoting here.
Our understanding of experience has becomedisordered in ways large and small.
More and more people create their ownrealities rather than live in the world
around them.
What do we lose when we no longertalk about the human condition, but
(01:08):
rather the user experience?
What do we lose?
>> Christine Rosen (01:13):
Well, I think we lose an important part of our humanity and
an understanding not only ofourselves as individuals,
but of our role in communities andfamilies, in culture.
And the title, although it sounds a littlebit portentous, Extinction of Experience,
actually comes from a naturalist, RobertMichael Pyle, who worried about children
growing up in a world where theydidn't actually experience nature.
(01:36):
They didn't get muddy,they didn't run around in forests,
they had no interaction with wildlife.
And then when they grew up,if a species, for example, went extinct,
would they care?
Because they wouldn't evenknow what they were missing.
And that essay really stayed withme because I started realizing,
looking around, and this includes myself.
So I'm indicting myself here, too, thatI was having experiences throughout my
(01:58):
daily life and watching othershave experiences via a screen.
So I was having look down experiences,not look up experiences.
And it was transforming the waywe all interacted whether you.
>> Peter Robinson (02:09):
I'm sorry, but
could you tell that story that youtell in the book, there was a rainbow.
You're in New York.
>> Christine Rosen (02:14):
Yeah, here, actually, yes.
>> Peter Robinson (02:16):
Sorry, go ahead.
>> Christine Rosen (02:17):
So, no, I had seen a performance at the Kennedy center.
>> Peter Robinson (02:19):
That is, it exactly.
>> Christine Rosen (02:20):
And it had been pouring rain, and we all went up to
the lovely roof terrace and thisgorgeous rainbow over the Potomac River.
And I was admiring it.
Every single person pulled out a phone andwas taking pictures.
And I completely understood that impulsebecause it's a really beautiful rainbow.
But they weren't just first stopping andexperiencing the rainbow with the people
(02:40):
they'd come to the show with, and theywere all immediately sending the pictures
and that moment, which for,it's fleeting, right?
A rainbow is a very fleeting andbeautiful, spontaneous thing.
They didn't pause to savor it.
And I wondered if that meant anything.
I think some people would argue,no, who cares?
And now they have a permanent memoryin the digital cloud of this thing,
(03:01):
which they instantly could share withmillions of their friends and followers.
But I think we do miss something whenwe don't pause to savor those moments,
because it makes us slow down, makesus think about what we can appreciate.
Doesn't have to be a rainbow.
It can be almost anything.
And it's getting harder and
harder to do that because the default nowis always to have the phone, always have
the screen, always have something tooccupy our minds and occupy our attention.
>> Peter Robinson (03:25):
Okay, again, from the extinction of experience.
This struck me as especially fascinating.
The philosopher Robert Nozickasked a simple question.
If we could create a machine that wouldoffer us the illusion of a life of
constant pleasure while alsoerasing from our memory any inkling
that we were hooked up to such a machine,would we choose to plug in?
(03:50):
The assumption has always beenthat most people will choose no.
We want to do certain.
Now you're quoting Nozick.
We want to do certain things andnot just have the illusion of doing them,
Nozick argued.
And then Christine Rosen adds,I'm not so sure.
And why do you add I'm not so sure?
>> Christine Rosen (04:07):
Well, I think this really struck me because Nozick's
experiment assumed a certain numberof things about what people valued
in their embodied human form.
Meaning, if you give someonean opportunity to do something in
simulated form, they might want to try it.
But they would still wantto have that experience,
ideally in an embodied human form,for it to be quote unquote real.
(04:29):
And I say quote unquote because I thinka lot of our sense of reality has shifted
dramatically because of the waywe can mediate experience.
An update to that experiment was reallyworrisome because they tweaked it
a little bit.
But one of the things that the people whoupdated Nozick's original experiment was.
>> Peter Robinson (04:45):
Nozick's original experiment is what, the 80s?
>> Christine Rosen (04:48):
Yes, I think it was in the early 80s.
>> Peter Robinson (04:50):
Okay [COUGH].
>> Christine Rosen (04:50):
Was to say, well, what if we gave you a pill and
basically made it easy?
You don't have to step into a machine and
remove yourself physically fromreality maybe it would just be.
You take a pill andit's very Matrix like, right?
If you've seen the movie the Matrix,this is the idea.
Would you plug in?
If you didn't, once you were plugged in,you didn't realize you were plugged in.
And more people, several generations on,said, well, I guess I would consider that.
(05:12):
I would consider livingin a virtual reality
rather than experiencingan embodied reality.
And that is the option fora lot of us throughout our daily lives.
Now we can forget that we havephysical bodies, we can live online,
we can live in virtual worlds,
have conversations with people all overthe world and never leave our homes.
(05:34):
So is that bad?
Well, if you look at rates ofloneliness and how much time,
particularly young people, spendphysically alone, not with other people,
I think there are some concerns andsome drawbacks to that trade off.
But to Nozick's point, I think it'sworrisome that people will now understand
their own reality differently if theydon't tie it to being in a physical body.
(05:56):
And a lot of folks in Silicon Valleywould argue, yeah, that's great,
we're gonna extend life.
We're gonna upload your consciousnesswhen you die, we're gonna live forever.
There are all these sort of schemes thatargue you shouldn't be limited by your
physical body.
But if you're conservative, which I am,I think our bodies teach us some humility
and lessons that we should attend to,even if we do have these tools.
>> Peter Robinson (06:16):
So this is so interesting.
I don't recall any passage in your bookin which you're explicitly theological.
But this is the old gnostic heresy,isn't it?
>> Christine Rosen (06:26):
Yes. >> Peter Robinson
trapped inside this body and if only wecould free ourselves from the physical.
Right.
>> Peter Robinson (06:34):
And that's not Judaism and orthodox Christianity
both insist that the humanbeing is both physical and
spiritual, that we of allof the creatures are both.
That there's somethingextremely profound about that.
Am I right about that?
>> Christine Rosen (06:53):
That's correct and in fact, I wrestled with.
I had a draft of a chapter about faith.
It became a little too complicatedperhaps [LAUGH] actually,
that's been one of the main requests forwhen it comes out in paperback.
But it was really difficult.
It became very theological.
But I found it extremely useful in guidingeven the secular argument about what it
(07:14):
means to be physicallyembodied human beings.
Because there are certain things thatwe cannot control about our own bodies.
And coming to terms with that ispart of becoming a whole person.
>> Peter Robinson (07:25):
Right, okay, so what is the, you mentioned a moment ago,
the rising rates of loneliness.
Beyond that, what are your fears?
Okay, so some young people are takinga little longer to get married and
have dates and so forth.
Tell me something I don't know.
>> Christine Rosen (07:45):
I worry about the lack of face to face communication.
That to me, that was sort ofthe motivating chapter in the books.
First chapter in the book,I guess the second chapter officially.
But I was noticing in my own life and
in my children's lives thatpeople were taking for
granted that having an interaction withanother human being means being physically
present and looking them in the eye andtrying to read their signals.
(08:07):
And there is a huge amount that we know,but
we don't know why weknow it as human beings,
we're evolutionarily to this point becausewe learned how to read each other's faces.
So if you cross your arms and glare,you might just be pondering something,
or you might be angry at me, butI know I can probably tell now.
>> Peter Robinson (08:25):
You can tell somehow, instinctively, immediately.
>> Christine Rosen (08:27):
Yes, but we're raising generations of young people now who
actually don't read the signals that,well, I think the lockdowns during
COVID where a lot of people hadto mediate through screens.
Suddenly brought this to the attention ofa lot of parents when kids were trying to
do school online and things like that.
But this is a problem foreveryone, adults included.
It's much easier and less risky notto deal with people in embodied form.
(08:51):
And again, this is, it's hard to,I can't cite data about this.
But I can tell you I've talked to lots ofpeople who work in public facing roles,
whether that's in diplomacy,
in business, in education, andthey all say the same thing.
Younger generations are havingto be taught these skills that
earlier generations took for granted.
So those of us who grew up withoutthese technologies, I'm Gen X, so
(09:12):
I'm the perfect hybrid.
I didn't have it as a kid, had a great GenX childhood where I drank out of a hose
and rode my bike around andwas never tracked by my parents.
But I had to adapt to the technologieswhen I became an adult.
Kids these days startout with these things,
and they live their worlds on a dailybasis through the technology.
And they don't practice other skills,those soft human skills,
(09:34):
learning to look at each other andinteract with each other and
negotiate with each otherwithout that sort of mediation.
And those are important, too.
And so, part of the book is a plea toremember that when we embrace technology
for some of these human interactions,there's an opportunity cost.
We do lose something, now,it might be worth it, but it's not always.
>> Peter Robinson (09:53):
Something is gained, but something is also lost.
>> Christine Rosen (09:55):
Exactly.
>> Peter Robinson (09:55):
All right, so
I just wanna push this a littlebit further because I'd like to,
I'm trying to figure out howfar you're willing to go.
You're being very, in fact,you say at one point in the book,
this book is a modest argument, or modest,I can't remember quite with the phrasing,
but you're charming, and modest,and reasonable, and so forth.
>> Christine Rosen (10:13):
Most of the time [LAUGH].
>> Peter Robinson (10:14):
Most of the time.
I'm trying to see if you're gonna say thisis responsible for the polarization and
screaming matches that wesaw in the last election.
Or I'm trying to see if I can get you tosay that you're angry about the effects,
or do you not wanna go there?
>> Christine Rosen (10:28):
Well, I'm very worried about the effects on the broader culture.
And it's not just because we don't knowhow to interact with each other like
decent human beings.
It's that we're really impatient as aculture because we have become habituated
to a life where we just have to tap orswipe or push a button and
get what we want on demand.
This is sold to us as our right, now,
if you read the advertisementsthat come out of Silicon Valley.
(10:51):
And while there's nothing wrong withconvenience, I think when we start to
apply it to other areas of lifewhere it's difficult to master and
improve life through convenience,like say, politics.
Which is actually about negotiation andcompromise and difficult long-term
questions, where you have to come upwith policy responses to problems that
you won't ever reap the benefits orrewards from the policy you're creating.
(11:15):
That's where I worry because I thinkit's very easy to just demonize and
get into a very comfortable positionbeing a moral grandstander.
If you're a politician, for example,
get a lot of positive feedback frompeople on your side for doing that.
And there really there's no risk involved,but our politics suffers.
So I do think we're bringing into Congressin particular a lot of people who
(11:38):
are there to be performative,
who are really speaking not to theirconstituents but to their followers.
And that is a very differentthing in a democracy.
We do not, our government->> Peter Robinson: Yuval Levin, didn't he
say that his phrase is that they're using->> Christine Rosen: It's a platform,
not an institution, yes->> Peter Robinson: That's exactly right.
So the institution's supposed to form them and
teach them how to behave, butinstead, if you use it as a platform,
(12:00):
institutional history, knowledge, there'sno need to respect that you're performing.
But I also think it means thatyou're speaking to your followers,
not to your constituents.
>> Peter Robinson (12:11):
Right, Christine, as I read your book, I thought to myself, there
is a pre-existing condition that Christineis not going into here, fair enough.
It's outside the scope of this book,but it comes to mind.
And so, if I may ask, this is a flyer,because these are questions not based
(12:32):
on your book, but just on the thinkingthat your book prompted in my head.
And the notion that,kids who are raised on technology,
the rising rates of loneliness,
that the kids are not justpicking up these iPhones.
The American family has alreadybeen under enormous pressure.
(12:55):
So this extinction of experience ishappening at a moment when all kinds of
bonds have already been broken and frayed.
And if I may, I'd just like to seeyou're mom, you're historian, you're
a journalist, you're a writer, you willhave given this some thought, I think.
>> Christine Rosen (13:13):
[LAUGH] >> Peter Robinson
in a few statistics,less than 20% of couples
who married in 1950 ended up divorced.
Since 1970, the rate has been about 50%.
The proportion of American children under18 living in a two parent home in 1960,
88%, in 1980, 77%, today,71%, steady decline.
(13:37):
The out of wedlock birth rate,this one is dramatic.
And here instead of raw figures, let megive you the famous 1965 Moynihan Report.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan was concernedabout, well, I'll quote it to you,
the fundamental problem, he's talkingabout a crisis in the black family,
the urban black family.
The fundamental problem isthat of family structure.
(13:58):
The black family in the urbanghetto is crumbling.
So long as the situation persists,the cycle of poverty and
disadvantage will continueto repeat itself.
The out of wedlock birth rate amongthe black family in American ghettos inner
cities, when he wrote that reportthat startled him in 1965 was 25%.
(14:18):
The out of wedlock birth ratetoday among whites is 27%,
among Hispanics 53%, andamong blacks is 69%.
So I have just,these statistics describe a catastrophe,
and it is into this catastrophe thatthese devices are being introduced.
(14:40):
What caused that catastrophe?
What caused so to speak,the pre existing condition?
Well, it's a tough question because there's, and it's-
>> Peter Robinson (14:50):
The dawn,,
I thought you'd have an answer.
>> Christine Rosen (14:52):
[LAUGH] I do not have a very simple answer to this, but
I have some ideas which I'll offer.
>> Peter Robinson (14:58):
And let it be noted for our viewers that I'm attack.
This is an ambush,this is not in the book.
>> Christine Rosen (15:05):
You're pouncing [LAUGH].
>> Peter Robinson (15:06):
I'm pouncing,
yes Republicans pounce[CROSSTALK] in real time.
>> Christine Rosen (15:10):
No, I think a couple of things have happened.
I mean look, the feminist movement andthe rise of women's education and
movement into the workforce wasa very destabilizing thing.
It was positive in many, many, many ways,
but it did place a newstrain on the family.
And I think that, if you look atfamily breakdown in particular,
you have to look at communities andat the community level.
(15:32):
And one of the things,if you remember Jane Jacobs and
others who talked abouteyes on the street.
So even if you're a child in a brokenhome in an urban setting, for example,
you had people, you had adults in yourworld who were looking out in general for
the kids in the neighborhood.
And that also disappeared fairly rapidly.
(15:53):
So you had people, cuz people worked.
People had to go to work,people were not on the street.
They were going into offices.
And so, you had a whole bunch of,Of kids who needed tending to,
but there weren't adults to do that job.
And enter first, television,then video games, and
then now you can take itwith you everywhere else.
>> Peter Robinson (16:12):
Television is sort of the first.
Television is different from radio,isn't it?
>> Christine Rosen (16:19):
It is. >> Peter Robinson
television, we begin to get thisargument taking very embryonic form.
Yes. >> Peter Robinson
it's with television, not radio.
Yes. >> Peter Robinson
when you're listening, there's somepart of your brain that's more active.
Anyway, that's my theory, but okay.
Well, and early technology critics like Neil Postman were
worried about the impactof television in the home.
But television, at least people did for
(16:41):
a long time gather around ittogether as a family, right?
Cuz it was expensive at first, so peoplecouldn't afford more than one television.
But I think forkids in these environments,
technology became a very cheap,useful babysitter.
And for lots of kids, it's actually saferto be in their house playing a video game
away from the streets than it isto be unattended in the streets.
(17:02):
So there are a lot of things that Ithink helped contribute to this crisis.
But I do worry about what we were promisedwith some of these technologies too.
If you think about the earlydays of the Internet, it was,
we're all gonna come together,we're gonna learn so
much about people all over the world andthis will make us better human beings.
And some of those promises were fulfilled.
There's a great vast amounts ofinformation that we now have access to.
(17:24):
I'm a historian,
I had to travel to archives toactually read people's letters.
And now a lot of those things are scannedand it makes it easier to do research.
But at the end of the day,it very quickly became a substitute for
a lot of things rather than just a tool,if you will.
And this is where the smartphonein particular very rapidly and
(17:45):
very detrimentally impactedour private worlds.
Because suddenly, you could be with yourfamily all together in the home, but
you could all be completely apart fromeach other mentally in terms of where your
attention was.
And you're also inviting into the privatesphere a lot of influences that
perhaps you might nothave chosen otherwise.
(18:06):
They're all there on the phone.
And I don't wanna soundlike a fear monger,
but it places a new burden ona family situation that as you
already described is feelinga great deal of strain.
So it adds to that burden.
>> Peter Robinson (18:19):
So if we could stick with this.
Well, this is fascinating to me,because 80% of the questions I ask,
I think I already know the answer,but these are real questions.
I can't figure this out myself.
A couple of quotations.
These are both a little long,but I think they'll pay off.
The late sociologist James Q Wilson,
(18:40):
he gave a very famous talk at AEI in 1997.
When the Department of Health and
Human Services studied some 30,000American households, it found that for
whites, blacks, and Hispanics, and forevery income level save the very highest,
children raised in single-parent homeswere more likely to be suspended from
school, to have emotional problems,and to behave badly.
(19:01):
Another study showed that whitechildren of an unmarried woman were
more likely than those in two-parentfamily to become delinquent,
even after controlling for income.
Even after controlling forincome, that's important.
Second quotation, sociologistsBradford Wilcox and Robert Lerman.
We estimate that the growth in medianincome of families with children would
(19:21):
be 44% higher if the United States enjoyed1980 levels of married parenthood today.
Further, 37% of the declinein men's employment rates
can be linked to the decreasingnumber of Americans who form and
maintain stable married families,close quote.
Children need families.
(19:44):
And we know this.
This is not a sectarian fact.
This is a human fact.
We know it.
Whatever our faith, Democrat,Republic, everybody knows this.
So why have we let this happen?
I mean, and these are the questionsthat are real questions.
(20:05):
Why have we let this happen?
And why did we just go through an electionin which neither candidate for President
of the United States breathed a wordabout strengthening the American family?
It is madness.
>> Christine Rosen (20:22):
Well, really, it was interesting to me that this is the first
election in which religiousfaith wasn't mentioned at all,
except for the fact that Kamala Harrisdidn't attend the Al Smith dinner.
No one asked them about their faith.
No one talked about faith.
No one talked about religious practices.
They talked a little bit here andthere about the religious vote,
depending on which swingstate you're discussing.
(20:43):
But that is new.
And I would add to your list of questions,or
perhaps->> Peter Robinson: No, no,
I ask and->> Christine Rosen: The
beginning of an answer.
>> Peter Robinson (20:50):
You answer.
>> Christine Rosen (20:51):
Let me try to give you an answer.
One of the other things that'sdeteriorated as the family structure has
deteriorated, leading to allthese second order problems,
is that parents now mistrust their ownjudgment about a great many things.
So you have this rise of a parentingexpertise class which changes its
advice left and right.
(21:11):
And you also have parents second guessingtheir own instincts because they do
not have perhaps, cuz they're havingchildren later and fewer in number.
And so they don't have this, again,a community of family members and
extended family whom they can rely on foradvice and everything.
So they turn to so-called professionals,some of whom have good advice.
(21:32):
You should listen to your pediatrician.
I think that's always a good idea.
But the anxiety over parenting as familysize shrunk is so intriguing to me.
And I think if you add technologyinto that mix, what you get are a lot
of anxious parents thinking,we're not doing what we're supposed to do.
All the experts are doing X, Y, or Z.
Maybe we can give our kids a leapfroglearning device because that's like
(21:56):
a computer.
And they need to knowhow to use computers.
>> Peter Robinson (21:58):
I wonder if we could track this.
You're about a generation and a half,maybe two generations younger than I am.
So as you're describing the neighborhoodsand the eyes on and so forth,
I'm thinking of the house I livedin when I was a little kid.
We lived there.
We moved when I was seven.
But I can remember that neighborhood.
All the moms stayed home.
(22:19):
Every single one.
All the fathers went off to work.
No family on our street had more thanone car, which meant that there were
arrangements made about->> Christine Rosen: Carpools, yeah.
Carpools, and who was going to go do the grocery shopping.
And babysitting was verythin on the ground.
So you went groceryshopping with your mom.
(22:40):
And when you went out to play,the door got opened and off you went.
And I remember no anxiety on my parents'part as long as I didn't go beyond the end
of the block in that direction orthe end of the block in that direction.
And every mom in every houseon that block knew me.
Now, there are all kinds of things aboutthat world that we don't want to return.
(23:04):
In particular,
there must have been, I think back onit now, there must have been a lot
of highly intelligent, capable women who->> Christine Rosen: A lot of wasted
talent->> Peter Robinson: Yes, exactly.
>> Christine Rosen (23:12):
In some of those kitchens [LAUGH]. >> Peter Robinson
this is not an argument forreturning to 1959.
All right, so what was it like for you?
Were things different bythe time you came along?
Well, I'm 51, so I was born in 1973 and-
>> Peter Robinson (23:28):
You child.
>> Christine Rosen (23:29):
[LAUGH] I was such a baby.
Yes, thank you.
But we were raised pretty free range.
We were free range kids andso we had a lot of freedom.
I knew everyone on my block.
I knew most of the neighbors.
There were->> Peter Robinson: So there was,
again, trust in the neighbors.
Trust in the neighbors. But
a lot of the moms worked at leastpart time, maybe a little more,
because they had to, including my own.
(23:50):
So we had a fair amount of freedom, but
there was also a sort ofthrown together thing.
Most of the babysittingcame from relatives.
I'd go stay at my grandma's whenmy parents wanted to go out.
But the real distinction, the huge shift,I think, from even that childhood,
a Gen X childhood,to millennial childhood.
And now for the Gen Z ers andGen Alpha coming up behind them,
(24:11):
is that they are more likely.
And this includes their parents now too,they're more likely to know the name of
a YouTube star or an influencer thanthey are to know their own neighbors.
And I think the isolation that wesee among Americans, we see it in
the loneliness data but there's alsoother ways that I think it comes out.
The enthusiasm for living one'slife online comes from this too,
(24:33):
connecting to people in yourneighborhood used to be a given.
And now it's really not so
much of community life thatused to happen in person.
Whether it was the oldRobert Putnam bowling leagues or
any of the other ways in whichwe measure social cohesion,
though a lot of thosethings did move online.
If you look at how we played games,
we had one kid whose parentscould afford an Atari.
(24:56):
So we'd all go to his house andtake turns playing Pong, I mean,
if any of you know Pong, it's rather.
>> Peter Robinson (25:01):
I remember Pong.
>> Christine Rosen (25:02):
It's a very slow moving game by today's standards.
>> Peter Robinson (25:04):
By today's standards.
>> Christine Rosen (25:04):
But again, it was a communal thing we were all physically in
the same space that'snot how anyone games.
Now they're talking to eachother on their headsets, but
they're alone in their ownhome in different places.
So we've just shifted how we socialize anda lot of that is now mediated.
So setting aside the privacy issues ofthe amount of data being collected on
our private activities.
When we do that, which is a whole otherdebate, I think it's also led to a very
(25:27):
fragmented sense of community fora lot of young people.
And this is why when they are thrown intotheir first jobs or go to college for
the first time, they struggle, how do Imake friends, how do I find my group?
It's not true of all kids, but I thinkwe've seen enough of a generation raised
with these technologies that theywill acknowledge the struggle.
I see it in young employees I work withand in my kid with my kids friends.
>> Peter Robinson (25:50):
So, James Q Wilson, one more time, I'm sorry,
I'll bring you right back into the book->> Christine Rosen: Please James Q Wilson
trumps me [LAUGH] I heard that speech,by the way.
You were there for that.
>> Christine Rosen (26:00):
[INAUDIBLE] Wonderful.
>> Peter Robinson (26:01):
You were only 13, by the way.
>> Christine Rosen (26:03):
97 [LAUGH].
>> Peter Robinson (26:05):
James Q Wilson,
I think this is from the same speechthroughout the Western world.
Political and intellectual Eliteshave abandoned interest in or
acquired a deep hostility to the forcethat has given meaning to Western life.
To a degree, this was understandable, wehave done more than end religious warfare,
he's talking about religion.
>> Christine Rosen (26:23):
Mm-hm. >> Peter Robinson
end religion itself, thereby subjectingmuch of mankind to a new form of warfare.
The hopeless struggle of lonelysouls against impulses they can
neither understand nor control.
Now, the speech was about the breakdownof the American family, and
he put religion right at the center of it.
So these two things that just baffle me,
(26:47):
why doesn't we all feel it?
Mm-hm. >> Peter Robinson
as, very few people are as articulateas you, but we all, we see isolation.
We are all nervous about whatis happening with our kids and
grandchildren picking up.
I don't understand why this doesn'tmake its way into politics, and
(27:09):
you raise this point whichhadn't occurred to me, but
again, religion is now no longereven spoken of, so why not?
We've lost the ability to even speak in the language of virtue,
because what we're circling aroundhere is virtue, character formation.
That's what gives people a senseof purpose, a sense of meaning,
a sense of understanding where theybelong in the world that they live in.
(27:32):
And I think what you see and
technology has offered the promise ofthat in digital form to a lot of people.
Your daily life is isolating andalienating, find community online,
you can game with your friends,you can do all these things.
But I think we've experimented with thealternative, with technology long enough
(27:53):
to say that the simulation is not the samething, qualitatively, it's different.
It doesn't actually inculcatethe kinds of virtues that we want,
it inculcates habits of mind thatactually undermine virtue because they
reward impatience, a sense of the now.
There's no respect for historical norms,there's no respect for
(28:14):
how things can taketime to really develop.
Talk to anyone who online dates,they will tell you this, the time and
space it takes to really get to knowanother human being has disappeared
because now we have todo it through an app.
Now, of course,not everybody, it's a choice.
[INAUDIBLE] But it becomes the norm, itbecame the norm very quickly, and that's
where I think technology is a very usefuland powerful thing in a lot of ways.
(28:38):
But when we invite it into ourmost intimate relationships and
it starts to teach us habits of mindthat develop certain character traits,
then we are using it to inculcatevery different things from virtue.
>> Peter Robinson (28:50):
So we know that a little kid the first things,
not the first things, because it takesa lifetime in some ways to learn them.
But when children are children,in teaching virtue,
basic character, and so forth,you need to learn two things above all.
Impulse control andhow to get along with other people, and
you will learn neither ofthose in the digital world.
>> Christine Rosen (29:11):
Right. >> Peter Robinson
Yes [LAUGH] There is not an app for either of those things, and
I think both of those things are alsowhat is lacking in our politics.
Politics is fueled by impulse control andan inability to get along and compromise,
because those are not rewardedin our culture these days.
>> Peter Robinson (29:29):
All right, now, Christine, there's a counterattack,
this is Marc Andreessen, andit's his concept, by the way.
I have to stipulate that Marc Hendersonis actually, a friend of mine.
>> Christine Rosen (29:38):
Okay, so sorry, it passed legal vetting.
>> Peter Robinson (29:41):
[LAUGH] I'm sure, in fact,
he will be flattered to hear you take him.
>> Christine Rosen (29:46):
[LAUGH] I'm not sure he'll be flattered by how I characterize
his argument, but let's hope so.
[LAUGH]>> Peter Robinson: So he writes about
reality privilege, and I'm quotingyou quoting, this is in your book,
you take him on in the book.
Yes.
>> Peter Robinson (29:57):
A small percent of people live in a real-world environment
that is rich.
Even overflowing, with glorious substance,beautiful settings, plentiful stimulation,
and many fascinating people to talk to,to work with, and to date.
And not dating, you're already a mother,but everything else is a fellow at okay?
(30:18):
Everyone else continues, Marc Andreessen,
the vast majority of humanitylacks reality privilege.
Their online world is orwill be immeasurably richer and
more fulfilling thanmost of the physical and
social environment around them,in the quote-unquote, real world.
(30:38):
Your real life may be richenough to satisfy you, but
there are a lot of people whoselives would be better online.
The answer to the problemis not less digital,
not more real experience,but more digital.
Supplanting real experience with richer,better, more beautiful,
(30:59):
more pleasant digital experience,and Christine Rosen says.
>> Christine Rosen (31:03):
[LAUGH] So now you'll see the rage come forth,
this bothers me to my core fora number of reasons.
First of all, I'm sure Marc Andreessen isa very nice person who has a very lovely
life, and good for him, he's earned it.
But the argument->> Peter Robinson: He's
a very nice person.
I'm sure he is.
>> Peter Robinson (31:18):
You stipulate it, I confirm it.
>> Christine Rosen (31:20):
[LAUGH] Okay, good, but the argument that what we owe each
other, is for the people whose livesare terrible, the only thing we can do for
them is to give them this simulated world.
Where they can slap on VR goggles thatpeople whose companies Andreessen will
reap great benefits from having investedin will give them everything they want.
That is an unfree that is not a choice,and
(31:42):
that is a dystopian science fiction novel.
It was called Ready Player One,and I think it's dystopian for
a number of reasons.
It takes away the idea of moral agency andfreedom for
the people who you slap the VR headset on,
and suggesting that it's a choice that'sbetter for them is condescending.
In the extreme, it also would very quicklylead to a world where there were these
(32:04):
huge class disparities in terms of whocould live their nice reality privilege
life and who would live the VR life.
And we do already see glimmers of thisin how some of these technologies
are being used.
So if you don't have great healthinsurance, you might be offered,
if you have a mental health issue, achatbot to talk to, not a human therapist.
If you have good health insurance,you can go talk to another human being and
(32:26):
have nice psychotherapy session everyweek and probably get better sooner.
So this two-tier way, this idea thatsome people deserve human contact and
human attention, andother people should be satisfied
with a simulation of itbothers me in the extreme.
Because it's the most vulnerablepopulations who get that first, children,
the elderly and the sick and the poor.
Those are the people he's talking aboutwhose realities are challenged but
(32:49):
our obligation to each otheris to improve their reality,
not to give them somesimulation of reality.
And that's to say nothing aboutthe mental health crises and
the physical crises thatthis would make much worse.
Because if you sit all day with VRgoggles on [LAUGH] what happens to
your actual body?
We know rising obesity rates, all kindsof health issues in this country,
(33:09):
much of which comes from the factthat we're very sedentary and
our bodies are meant to move.
So I take issue with nearly every part ofwhat he says there because I think it's
a very pessimistic way to seethe future of humanity and
I don't think it's what he would want forhis own children.
A lot of people in Silicon Valleywon't allow their kids
to use the products that they devise foreverybody else and
(33:30):
I think there's a truth therethat should be acknowledged.
So I think that's just way toopessimistic a way forward for humanity,
and I would strongly oppose it [LAUGH].
>> Peter Robinson (33:41):
And I see a new show here, we can get you and
Mark to sit down and debate.
>> Christine Rosen (33:45):
I would love to debate him [LAUGH].
>> Peter Robinson (33:48):
So what should we do, again, from the extinction of experience,
a decade ago, a book about how technologyis changing us would offer solutions for
a more balanced relationshipwith our devices.
Such as take a digital sabbath,one day a week, no digital devices,
avoid multitasking, andput those phones away at the dinner table.
(34:12):
These are no longer enough,we need to be more like the Amish
in our approach to technology,well now, what on earth do you mean?
>> Christine Rosen (34:24):
So I said this a little tongue in cheek, but only a little,
so I'm not saying give up your zippers andturn off your electric lights,
but the Amish approach to technologyis very aware in this sense.
They're not against all technology butwhat they do when something new arrives is
sit down as a community andask a bunch of very important questions.
(34:45):
How will this change family life,
what will this do tothe private space of the home?
Does this open our community up to valuesand ideas that would undermine what we
think is important, and is this somethingthat we really do need, or is it a want?
And there are many,many other questions each group asks but
I think that very thoughtfulway of approaching technology,
(35:09):
we didn't do that withsocial media platforms.
And we're in a bit of a mess now in termsof how they've impacted our kid's mental
health, our politics,our culture in lots of ways.
And I think we're starting to have thatdiscussion a little more now that AI has
come onto the scene, andthat's all for the good.
There's a lot of fear mongering, there'sa lot of ignorant discussion about AI, and
(35:30):
there's a lot of confusionabout what AI even is.
But I am heartened by the fact that peopleseem to have learned a bit of a lesson
from just uncriticallyembracing each new thing and
this is where I becomedeeply conservative.
Every new thing is not an improvement,if you study history, you know this.
And I think this is one of the thingswhere we have been just absolutely dazzled
by what our technologies can do forus and the power and sense of control and
(35:53):
convenience they offer us that we'veforgotten to ask those important questions
about some of these new tools.
And we must do that if we're goingto have a flourishing culture and
politics and family and community life.
>> Peter Robinson (36:07):
So if we started with my generation, we went to your generation,
if it's not, if I may,your twins who are now in college.
>> Christine Rosen (36:16):
Yes, they're freshmen in college.
>> Peter Robinson (36:18):
And did you forbid them from, how did you raise them?
>> Christine Rosen (36:20):
So they- >> Peter Robinson
if I may ask.
No, you may, and they will bitterly complain about it still,
although they're coming around,at zero to five, they had no screens.
Because I started studying this stuff morethan 20 years ago, before I had kids.
I was studying Myspace andthe early social media platforms and
talking to early Facebook employees andresearchers.
(36:42):
And I was very worried about the way theytalked about what they were doing cuz they
didn't talk about, hey, we want to createthis thing that makes life more fun.
It was we want to control human behavior,we want to know everything about you.
And their intentions were still good,make a good profit, grow,
do all these entrepreneurial things,give people a platform, but their absolute
(37:04):
fascination with human behavior struck meas something that was worth following.
And I think it's proven to be a realchallenge as they try to explain
the harm some of their tools have done.
For my kids, yeah, zero to five,no screens, no tv, no computers, nothing.
They were, but I guess they were Amish,[LAUGH] although they did have zippers.
(37:25):
But once they were five years old,I allowed them to watch children's,
I think they watched the Lion Kingwas the first thing they ever saw.
But by that point they were reading andwhen they saw something, what interested
me is that with their peer group whowatched a lot of stuff much earlier, and
no judgment, people have to maketheir own choices with their family.
I've become very libertarian about thisin terms of the choices people make.
(37:45):
But they would watch something scary, andit wouldn't scare them because they were
old enough to have like, they'd readstories, had stories read to them.
They hadn't seen anything super scaryon the screen and so it wasn't that
alarming to them in quite the same way,which I thought was fascinating.
They were big Minecraft fanaticsas they got into middle school,
so they had rules for that, they didn'tget smartphones till nineth grade.
(38:09):
They were among the last in their group,I really did hold out, and
God bless them,they hated every minute of it, but
they are able now to reallybe aware of their use.
Doesn't mean they're perfectlygood at controlling it but
one of my sons spent a monthhiking in Wyoming with no phone.
They had a sat phone in case a bearattacked, and he came back from
(38:32):
that experience and he said, wow,I waste so much time on my phone.
And so,>> Peter Robinson: He admitted that
to his mom.
Totally, of course, I was patting myself on the back, he's like,
don't say it.
So I didn't,[LAUGH] I didn't say I told you so.
>> Peter Robinson (38:43):
And we'll edit that out.
>> Christine Rosen (38:45):
[LAUGH] No, but
I think that their awareness of howmuch time they spend on it, even
though they're pretty disciplined, andit's very different for boys than girls.
I think for girls, so much more ofsocial life happens on social media and
on the phone and it's different andmore difficult struggle.
My friends who, I have a niece, butalso my friends who have daughters,
(39:06):
talk to me about this.
So I was pretty draconian and even still,
I am sure that they found stuff ontheir discord servers and whatnot,
where they were all chatting thatI would be horrified to know.
I kind of as they get older, they tell memore things about what they saw when they
were 12 or 13, and I'm alarmed.
But I think, though,
(39:27):
I was lucky in that I did a lot of mywork from home, and I also had twins.
So as my economist friends say,
they would start to play witheach other at a certain age.
So they entertained each other and in thatsense, I was able to keep them occupied
without a screen, butthat is not possible for a lot of parents.
You can't cook dinner and get stuffdone around the house without having
(39:49):
some way to keep your kids occupied.
>> Peter Robinson (39:51):
You said, I was very struck about the Amish,
the notion that the communitymakes decisions, so we have a new.
Chief executive about to take office and
the 119th Congress isabout to take office.
Is that even, I have a question here,
what would you say toDonald Trump about all of this?
(40:11):
If you could tell him anything at all,advise him in any way you wished, and
the guarantee was that hewould actually listen.
But I'm not sure that's even the rightlevel at which these kinds of
decisions should be made yet.
Do you want our politicians to do oris there something you'd say
to Donald Trump orto the leaders of the incoming Congress?
>> Christine Rosen (40:32):
So as a conservative, I tend to think most top-down federal
solutions are gonna justcreate more problems.
But with one exception here, andthis is actually broadly bipartisan, and
you will see legislation co-sponsoredby Katie Britt of Alabama and
John Fetterman of Pennsylvania.
These two agree on very little,but they came together to
(40:53):
sponsor legislation about enforcingan age limit for social media use.
And that is one area where I think policyhas, there's enough cultural momentum
now and enough understanding ofthe damage caused when a nine or
a ten-year-old spends hours a day onInstagram looking at stuff that was
designed for adults andreally quite harmful.
(41:13):
And so I think parents have borne thisburden for too long because the answer
was, well, you're just a bad parentif you let your kids see this.
But it is everywhere, it is ubiquitous and
it is very difficult unless you canget a very committed group of parents
all together to commit not to have theirkids have a smartphone till 8th or
9th grade andnot commit to use the social media stuff.
And that's really a heavy lift whensomething is damaging to children.
(41:35):
This country has generally historicallybeen really good about coming together and
saying, you know what, that's wherethe government has a role to protect.
We've done it with alcohol andage limits, we've done it with driving,
you have to get a driver's licensein order to operate a car,
all kinds of ways in whichthis is something we do.
And it's time to now enforce what'salways been on the books but
never really enforced againstthe technology companies.
(41:57):
The burden should now be on the technologycompanies to enforce an age limit and
they should be punished if they do not.
Just like we would close down a shopthat was selling alcohol to minors.
And that is a shift that on both sides ofthe aisle now in the House and the Senate,
there are different bills, butthere really is momentum now for
this to become the law, the land.
So in that sense, I think federallegislation would set a standard that then
(42:21):
the companies have to meet.
>> Peter Robinson (42:23):
And what about at the state level?
I'm thinking of, I'd never putthese two together before, but
I'm thinking now of the schoolchoice legislation.
The latest news is that Texas now hasenough legislators that Governor Abbott
believes that they'll beable to enact school choice.
And I'm conscious of reading,not in a systematic way,
I haven't studied it the way you have.
(42:44):
But I'm conscious of reading that thisschool, that school, the other school,
has announced either no phone, no digitaldevices in the classroom, or asking
parents to sign digital device bans excepton weekends, something of this nature.
It feels as though that's gonnabe easier in private schools or
religious schools than inlarge public operations.
(43:04):
So possibly school choice might makeit school choice legislation that makes
it easier for parents to send theirkids to schools they want them to attend
might dovetail with this greater,greater willingness to say no, really.
What it comes to, isn't it?
>> Christine Rosen (43:21):
Yes.
>> Peter Robinson (43:22):
Is it really adults saying no, holding the line?
>> Christine Rosen (43:25):
Yes, somewhat although so much of life now occurs on the phone.
I mean, I wasn't able to parktoday without an app for
my phone [LAUGH], right?
I mean, so much of life is nowfunneled through apps that
you actually can't escapeit even if you want to.
And in the educational environment,that's very true for kids.
Some kids get, even in public schools willget an iPad when they enter kindergarten.
>> Peter Robinson (43:45):
And you've given them as part of.
>> Christine Rosen (43:46):
Yes, because the tech companies have given it all to the public
schools for free and say,why don't you use all our great stuff so
they can also hoover up a vastamount of data on your kids.
All anonymized we're reassured but[LAUGH] that's another debate.
But I would say this about that,
that's actually a perfect example ofconservative principles in action.
Organically, communities are sayingsomething's not working here.
(44:06):
What can we do?
What sort of solutions can we have?
You have these bell to bell bans thatare happening, so from the morning bell.
>> Peter Robinson (44:12):
Bell to bell.
>> Christine Rosen (44:12):
Yeah, the bell to bell ban of cell phones, I think that's great.
I think though this is, and I'm no fan ofthe teacher's unions, but this is actually
a place where conservatives who careabout this, liberals who care about this,
should sit down and talk to the teacher'sunions and get them on board too.
Because teachers don't like thesedevices in the classroom either,
they distract their students,
they're competing with whatever's on the->> Peter Robinson: Is gonna get behind you
(44:34):
on this one.
Well, here's hoping.
I doubt it because I don't think shereally does have the best interests of
America's children at heart,despite what she's often claiming.
But parents and teachers all knowthat this is what would help kids.
So I think we see those movements,we see a real effort to make that happen.
That's from the bottom up,
(44:54):
that's how I tend to prefer thissort of social reforms happening.
But I think if you have legislation inplace that says these companies are gonna
be held accountable when they letunderage kids on their platforms that
are designed for adults.
And you have this parents' movement, and
you've got my friend Jonathan Haidthas written an excellent book,
Anxious Generation,about the mental health impact.
>> Peter Robinson (45:12):
And Abigail Shrier.
>> Christine Rosen (45:13):
And Abigail Shrier has done wonderful work on this.
I mean, people are listening to this now,and so there is momentum.
And so if you have both of thosethings happening at the same time,
I think we will see some,that's how cultural shifts happen,
you can't just do it from the top down.
And if you're working from the bottom up,
you often will butt heads with rules andregulations that are out of date.
>> Peter Robinson (45:33):
Okay, so last question Christine, are you optimistic?
And I'm not asking a question aboutyour obviously optimistic character,
your personality.
But do you think that by the timethose twins of yours have given
you grandchildren,let's put it off in the distance.
They just started college, so
we're talking about a decade from now,let's say that norms and
(45:57):
protocols will have been established andwill have become accepted.
Of course, at the same time, on the onehand I'm saying, norms and protocols,
well, they have emerged that helpcontrol the use of digital devices and
ensure that we don't extinguishour own human experience.
Of course, at the same time thatthis decade is taking place, and
(46:18):
these norms and protocols may begin toemerge and just the way you suggested,
AI is coming at us like a tsunami.
>> Christine Rosen (46:25):
Mm-hm.
>> Peter Robinson (46:26):
So are you optimistic or
is there just gonna be little pocketsof communities like the Amish?
>> Christine Rosen (46:33):
Mm-hm.
>> Peter Robinson (46:34):
Who just are able to hold the line against the sort of digital
debauchery of the modern world.
>> Christine Rosen (46:42):
So I would call myself cautiously optimistic for two reasons.
Watching Gen Z move into adulthoodhas given me some room for optimism.
>> Peter Robinson (46:52):
It has.
>> Christine Rosen (46:53):
So they do things like they'll all go out to eat and
everyone has to put their phonein the middle of the table,
and whoever picks up their phone duringdinner to check it has to pay the bill.
So they kind of lash themselvesto the mast of the ship.
And they're doing it because they know howintrusive everyone looking at their phone
and how fracturing of attention andcamaraderie it is to do that.
(47:14):
So they have to deliberately make thatchoice, and they do make that choice.
They're exploring more analog things.
There's this resurgence andkids wanting vinyl records and stuff,
which I think is sweet,but not a whole trend.
Another thing though,they are wildly independent.
They are independent in terms oftheir registration as voters, and
they will move one way or the other,depending on what they believe.
(47:35):
But they also resist being told what todo in a very healthy and skeptical way.
So if you think about in the employmentspace where you're gonna have a lot more
monitoring and surveillance of employees->> Peter Robinson: Yes, of course.
They are a generation that brings into,
with their experience growingup with digital technology
just a healthy skepticism, which hopefullywon't curdle into cynicism or nihilism.
(47:58):
Where if a boss says here, put on thisbadge and you'll get $25 off a month on
your health insurance if you let ustrack what you do outside of work,
how many steps you take.
I think a lot of Gen Z, look,my generation and millennials were like,
okey-dokey, andoff they went being tracked.
That is not Gen Z, they are resistant insome ways to that sort of surveillance
because they have been watchedtheir whole lives by their parents,
(48:22):
by media, by companies thatare constantly trying to sell them stuff.
So they have a skepticism.
My concern is that thatcurdles into cynicism.
We don't want it to be cynicism, we wantthem to actually act on that skepticism
and to reform these platforms andto make new things.
New things that actually reflect theirvalues not that first generation of techno
(48:43):
enthusiasm that was uncritical aboutwhat it might do in terms of harm and
opportunity costs.
>> Peter Robinson (48:48):
Got it.
Christine, may I ask you to close ourconversation by reading a passage from
your book?
>> Christine Rosen (48:54):
Yes, if we are to reclaim human virtues and
save our most deeply rooted humanexperiences from extinction,
we must be willing to placelimits on the more extreme,
transformative projects proposedby our techno enthusiasts.
Not as a means of stifling innovation, butas a commitment to our shared humanity.
(49:14):
Only then can we live freelyas the embodied, quirky,
contradictory, resilient,creative human beings we are.
>> Peter Robinson (49:23):
Christine Rosen, author of the Extinction of Experience.
Thank you.
>> Christine Rosen (49:27):
Thank you.
>> Peter Robinson (49:29):
For Uncommon Knowledge, the Hoover Institution and Fox News,
I'm Peter Robinson.
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