In this new book, Han describes the deleterious effects of that degeneration on storytelling. Storytelling used to bind us communally over the campfire; it connected us to our pasts and helped us imagine hopeful futures. The digital screen has replaced that fire, making us individuals performing factitious versions of ourselves to unseen peers,... See more

The philosopher Byung-Chul Han has understood more than most how modern consumer societies are emptying their souls — tossing out tradition and ritual in the name of the next new thing. “Everything that binds and connects is disappearing. There are hardly any shared values or symbols, no common narratives that unite people,

Enter one of these attractions after reading Han, and it will look rather more sinister than an elaborate exercise in kitsch gimmickry, since he believes that the cultural symptoms of digital capitalism effectively degrade the very nature of experience. Han regularly invokes Walter Benjamin’s distinction between the two senses of experience... See more