
Filterworld
How Algorithms Flattened Culture
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Narrated by:
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Kaleo Griffith
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By:
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Kyle Chayka
A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK • From New Yorker staff writer and author of The Longing for Less Kyle Chayka comes a timely history and investigation of a world ruled by algorithms, which determine the shape of culture itself.
"[Filterworld] is about how algorithms changed culture…[Chayka asks] what is taste? What is a sense of aesthetics? And what happens to it when it collides with the homogenizing digital reality in which we now live."—Ezra Klein
From trendy restaurants to city grids, to TikTok and Netflix feeds the world round, algorithmic recommendations dictate our experiences and choices. The algorithm is present in the familiar neon signs and exposed brick of Internet cafes, be it in Nairobi or Portland, and the skeletal, modern furniture of Airbnbs in cities big and small. Over the last decade, this network of mathematically determined decisions has taken over, almost unnoticed—informing the songs we listen to, the friends with whom we stay in touch—as we’ve grown increasingly accustomed to our insipid new normal.
This ever-tightening web woven by algorithms is called “Filterworld.” Kyle Chayka shows us how online and offline spaces alike have been engineered for seamless consumption, becoming a source of pervasive anxiety in the process. Users of technology have been forced to contend with data-driven equations that try to anticipate their desires—and often get them wrong. What results is a state of docility that allows tech companies to curtail human experiences—human lives—for profit. But to have our tastes, behaviors, and emotions governed by computers, while convenient, does nothing short of call the very notion of free will into question.
In Filterworld, Chayka traces this creeping, machine-guided curation as it infiltrates the furthest reaches of our digital, physical, and psychological spaces. With algorithms increasingly influencing not just what culture we consume, but what culture is produced, urgent questions arise: What happens when shareability supersedes messiness, innovation, and creativity—the qualities that make us human? What does it mean to make a choice when the options have been so carefully arranged for us? Is personal freedom possible on the Internet?
To the last question, Filterworld argues yes—but to escape Filterworld, and even transcend it, we must first understand it.
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Critic reviews
“Trying to quiet 'algorithmic anxiety’ and 24-7 digital overwhelm, Chayka posits, we tend to take refuge in the average. [Filterworld] urges us to throw off the blanket some influencer has convinced us is a necessity…Unlike the cascade of content from strangers on the internet, Filterworld, as a proper book will, evokes less transient impulses than genuine, lingering feelings: depression about our big-box corporate dystopia and admiration for Chayka’s curiosity and clear writing style.” —Alexandra Jacobs, The New York Times Book Review
“Necessary reading for anyone who has wondered just how, in expanding our world, the internet has ended up emptying our experience of it. Chayka's wide-ranging anatomy of algorithmic curation—which, he argues, is increasingly the cultural substitute for human choice itself—makes a bracing case not only for creativity exercised beyond the confines of digital constriction, but also against the dehumanizing sameness algorithms have introduced into our societies and lives. Timely, erudite, important.” —Ayad Akhtar, Pulitzer Prize winner and author of Homeland Elegies
“Filterworld is a vital interrogation of algorithmic technology and its unrelenting power in shaping both our online and offline experiences. Chayka deftly explains how today’s social media ecosystem operates and, more importantly, reveals a way out of the ever-tightening grip of this stifling digital filtration.” —Taylor Lorenz, author of Extremely Online: The Untold Story of Fame, Influence, and Power on the Internet
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Important book for mondern times
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important book
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Excellent argument
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Understanding the Cookie Cutter Culture.
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On the contrary side, Chayka’s analysis sometimes dulls its keen edge through occasional prolixity and a tendency towards unnecessary repetition of certain terms that underpin his thesis (“flattening of culture”, “algorithmic fill-the-blank”). And while the author liberally shares his personal tastes in literature and music, almost in an attempt to revive curation-by-personal-suggestion, the practice verges on overbearing oversharing (Sorry, anime is just not my thing!)
Still, having seen first hand the transition from a “golden age” of human music curation, for instance, from late ‘50s to Top 40 radio, Motown, Stax, Scepter, Atlantic and so many other record label streams, British Invasion, classic and album-oriented rock (AOR) when it was simply rock, etc., I find it paradoxical that musical culture was also “flattened” in a sense, meaning a commonly shared point of reference for several generations was “baked into” the culture at large for the musically open, and, even as those of us lived it, it was a vital, magical time, with masterpieces seemingly coming from every direction. All was well, at least musically, until the social tumult and the human, creative losses and crises catalyzing in the late ‘60s gradually led to the almost inevitable fragmentation of culture on multiple modes and levels.
Ultimately, I agree with Chayka that algorithmic hegemony and AI infiltration of culture threatens the muse we thought was innately human, although perhaps it’s been a while since we had anything new, personal and exciting to express. Renaissance anyone, or has that boat forever sailed away?
Filterworld - A timely study of the reliance on AI algorithms over human curation of culture
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Interesting, but dense, in a good way
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Writing a review at all, means acknowledging the algorithm’s power over us, and it’s tendency to push books that get more likes and, well, reviews. Ironically? (looking at you, Alanis), my hope is that writing this review will inspire more of my friends to read it, and thereby, decide to remove themselves from algorithms 😇
Here’s my ironic review
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One of the most important books of this time
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Everything has slowly become algorithm curated!
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Required reading (er. listening)
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