Filterworld

How Algorithms Flattened Culture

By: Kyle Chayka

Narrated by: Kaleo Griffith

Length: 11 hrs and 56 mins

Publisher's summary

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.

©2024 Kyle Chayka (P)2024 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

A Most Anticipated Book of 2024: Foreign Policy • Lit Hub • The Millions • i-D Magazine • Town and Country • Elle Magazine

“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 incisively diagnoses a problem that I've long felt but struggled to name and is the most convincing explanation I've encountered for why so many of our cultural products carry an uncanny whiff of familiarity. Amidst cheers for the death of the monoculture, Chayka offers a sharp and necessary counterpoint, demonstrating how mass culture, even as it diffuses into niche datastreams, trends toward a vacuous mean.” —Meghan O'Gieblyn, author of God, Human, Animal, Machine: Technology, Metaphor, and the Search for Meaning

“Intriguing—and distressing. . . Chayka’s timely investigation shows how we can reject the algorithms of the digital era and reclaim our humanity.” —Kirkus Reviews *starred review*

Here’s my ironic review

This book has a beautiful way of delivering some horrifying subject matter, namely, how algorithms have slowly removed our uniqueness, our sense of cultural and artistic “taste,” and displaced art for the sake of art.

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 😇

Important Book for Our Times

Somewhat dry, but I think vital analysis of how social media platforms and their algorithms are changing (negatively) how we consume and create art, but also discusses other societal effects. If you are sick of SM, listen to this book and you’ll get a better understanding as to why, and what you can do about it.

Ironic that the narrator sounded like an AI. So robotic and unengaged from the material. Would have been better if read by the author.

Blowing my mind

This book reframed my understanding of how I interact online and I’ll be thinking of it and referring to it for many months to come!

Excellent

This book is excellent! Very thought provoking and one I will come back to. Strongly recommend.

Thorough discussion, lots of anecdotes

The author muses on the effect of filtering in our modern technology environment. There are many interesting anecdotes, those some very niche-y. He argues for specialized Curation to prevent flattening and homogenization of media or content.
I would agree with him. I would’ve enjoyed a deeper into technical solutions, and given the publication date, more on the influence of AI.

Digital revolution? Maybe.

I felt this beginning as a pretty depressing read, but the author, after carefully describing the cultural milieu we find ourselves immersed in, began to develop a way whereby we could extricate ourselves back to a real--and not manufactured--system of cultural evolution.
A lot depends, as always on the choices we make; informed, considered, and acted upon.

Thinking about it a lot during/after read

It mostly sticks because the topic is so relevant and present in daily life. I liked the structure. Some of the personal anecdotal parts took me out of it a little but I think it might be geared to make the book a good time capsule if read in the future.

The flattening

I picked this up after hearing Ezra Klein's interview with Chayka. There are some brilliant ideas in this book and a lot to ponder. In fact it may have motivated me to finally figure out how to use Audible's clip feature. I found it inspiring rather than depressing, Chayka's love of culture really comes through, as well as his love of the Internet as a way to find culture. I'm so glad that he discussed how fun the internet used to be, like the blog era and early social media. This is not an anti-technology book. Worth a read.

Algorithm Analysis

A nice mix of history and observation of current “concerns” related to social media and algorithms.

The dire importance of acknowledging this problem

As a creative person it comes as a huge a relief to read this book and hear what I have been feeling instinctually for a while now laid out in such a concise and wonderful book. Will be recommending this to everyone. Thank you!