How can we get the spiritual nourishment we traditionally found in contemplating nature directly from experience mediated by digital devices?

The Greeks lived in “a humanized world,” writes Edith Hamilton , which freed them from the blinding terror of a hostile cosmos.

The philosopher Charles Taylor argues that even in a “secular age” the meaning of human experience depends on a sense of transcendent purpose or “cosmic connection” Increasingly, this involves looking at a screen for work or pleasure.

The poet Rainer Maria Rilke saw art as a means of redemption from the anomie of modern existence in mass society.

He believed that art could be profoundly humanising, while he perceived the technology of his day as bringing “degradation” For the ancient Greeks , art was techne, knowledge and skill in making.

We spend an increasing amount of time “consuming secondhand experiences presented as entertainment” while at the same time turning experiences “into something immediately consumable by others” These activities differ from art in that they are about generating transient records of experience that increasingly substitute for the experience itself.

The gradual extinction of direct experience undermines our ability to resist the digital technologies offered by digital technologies.