Cognitive Extinction
Saving Human Thought While We Still Can
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Cognitive Extinction
Pre-order Now for €17.99
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Narrated by:
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Nita Farahany
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By:
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Nita Farahany
“This may be the most important book written about technology, human flourishing, and what we need to protect to become fully ourselves.” —Lori Gottlieb, bestselling author of Maybe You Should Talk to Someone
A sobering look at how digital life is eroding our thinking, our freedom, and what it means to be human—and how to reclaim what we've lost.
Something is disappearing from human life: our ability to think freely, engage meaningfully with others, and be present in our own lives. Can we adapt to the modern world without losing the qualities that make us human?
In Cognitive Extinction, Nita Farahany, one of the world's foremost scholars on the ethical, legal, and societal implications of emerging technologies, names what is happening: we are losing our cognitive liberty, the ability to trust our perceptions and govern ourselves. We can sense this intuitively, but we don’t recognize that these struggles present a dire threat to our institutions and the common ground beneath us all—the cognitive commonwealth itself.
After years of questioning these alarming trends, she found answers when she least expected it: through her own grief. When her daughter, Callista, passed away, Farahany’s cognitive world collapsed. As she tried to make sense of what was happening, she discovered that the mental capacities she had lost mirrored those being hollowed out across society through digital immersion.
What has been degraded, Farahany argues, can still be rebuilt. That begins with each of us. We must resist the temptation to sleepwalk into cognitive extinction and collectively recognize that our mental freedom is at stake. Only then can we reclaim a world in which humans find meaning and flourish.
Deeply felt and rigorously researched, Cognitive Extinction is a clarion call for all of us to pay attention to what we’re losing—while we can still feel ourselves losing it.
Reviews
“The most original and unsettling treatment of tech's effects on consciousness and society that I have seen. Farahany gives us a novel perspective on how ‘digital immersion’ is reducing our cognitive abilities not just as individuals who need to connect, but as a society that depends on the ‘cognitive commons’ that humanity built over the last 5,000 years. A gripping read.”
—Jonathan Haidt, NYU-Stern School of Business, author of The Anxious Generation and The Righteous Mind
“Do you ever feel like the way you use technology is making you less intelligent—and less free? You aren’t alone. Nita Farahany explains why—and more importantly, how to get your brain and freedom back—in this outstanding book.”
—Arthur C. Brooks, bestselling author of The Meaning of Your Life
“Unquestionably one of the most important books of the year. Farahany, writing with grace and rigor, explains the existential problem of the AI moment: we are losing the ability to control our minds just as AI arrives to displace us. Read this book, beginning to end—with notifications silenced and AI summaries banned—and come up with a plan to fight back.”
—Nicholas Thompson, CEO of The Atlantic and bestselling author of The Running Ground
“Cognitive Extinction will transform our understanding of emerging technology. Using vivid portraits and rigorous scientific research, Nita Farahany shows that, far beyond capturing our attention, technology can erode the human capacity for growth and learning. But, importantly, she shows how we can fight back—individually and collectively—making this essential reading for our generation and generations to come.”
—Carol S. Dweck, Stanford University professor and bestselling author of Mindset
"Farahany goes way beyond screen time and into a terrifying but fascinating account of what is happening to us as a species. The book captures something difficult to measure or describe—that feeling of being a robot, of not living your own life. Read it to understand what we are becoming, and how to reverse course.”
—Tim Wu, author of The Age of Extraction
“With honesty and bravery, Nita Farahany shows us how grief ravages a human mind—dimming our capacities, dulling our senses—and then offers a sobering account of how two decades’ worth of sustained digital immersion has done the same thing to every single one of us. Read it and remember not to sleepwalk through your own life."
—Jayson Greene, author of UnWorld
