Filterworld

How Algorithms Flattened Culture

By: Kyle Chayka

Narrated by: Kaleo Griffith

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.

important book

important book about the effects of algorithm on culture...a must read. Should be taught im schools

Excellent argument

I loved the idea behind this book, and agree with much of the supposition of the author. Though it did seem a bit nostalgic and pretentious. Overall good to ponder upon, but the author did meander a bit much.

Understanding the Cookie Cutter Culture.

Brilliant analysis about the impact of algorithms on culture. This is a great narrative analysis about how algorithms came into modern culture and how it is impacting the choices we make as consumers and how we may lose our human connection if left unchecked.

Important book for mondern times

If you want to learn about the stickiness of modern-day populism, the decay of democracy (potentially reaching T-Doom), and the internal mechanics of social media, this is a must-read.

The facts

I loved how honest it was everyone is a slave to the algorithm but it’s a good and bad thing we have to learn to coexist with it.