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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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CHOICE Review

Chayka, a writer for The New Yorker, pursues the idea that algorithms flatten culture by driving producers to mimic only the styles that get the most "likes." Exploring the effect of algorithms beyond the familiar critique of social media, he argues that Airbnb is driven by the same flattening forces. Hosts remake their rental spaces to match the most expected kind of space for the fantasy of being a local, not a tourist. The author explores a similar theme in his well-known essay for the Guardian, "The Tyranny of the Algorithm," in which he notes that coffeehouses all over the world gradually adopted a "Brooklyn" aesthetic through the 2010s. Chayka is not primarily concerned with the polarizing effects of algorithms leading consumers into different, opposing silos. His concern is with how the "Instagrammability" of the experience matters more than the experience itself. He cites much evidence from the social sciences, but readers from those disciplines may find his framing of each issue with stories of his personal experience distracting. Chayka considers proposed ways of regulating recommendation filters to fight cultural homogenization. He holds the most hope, though, for consumers relying more on curation by quirky human connoisseurs. Summing Up: Recommended. General readers and undergraduates. --Beau Weston, Centre College

Booklist Review

Filterworld, as charted by New Yorker writer Chayka, is, simply, our everyday world. From the songs Spotify autoplays to the items Amazon encourages a shopper to add to their cart, the evolution of algorithms has completely changed how users interact with online platforms. As Chayka shows, these endorsements are based not around creating a better user experience but on producing advertising clicks and longer session times, all leading to bigger revenues and market shares. Chayka delineates how our most used social feeds have abandoned chronological browsing in favor of showing just what the algorithm has chosen. While Filterworld is not written as a self-help program, Chayka's frank discussion of his own digital detox, full of anxiety before arriving at an algorithmic homeostasis, will inspire readers to believe there is a way out, returning to human tastemakers. He makes it clear that this is increasingly a decision which bumps directly against how our digitally reliant lives are set up. Fans of the burgeoning genre of Big Tech ethnography will appreciate Chayka's astute historical analysis and philosophical rumination on the subject, all "filtered" expertly with his own biography as a millennial who grew up amid the explosion of the socially fixated web.

Notas de autor provistas por Syndetics

KYLE CHAYKA is a staff writer at The New Yorker , where he writes a column on digital technology and the impact of the Internet and social media on culture. His debut nonfiction book, The Longing for Less , an exploration of minimalism in life and art, was published in 2020. As a journalist and critic he has contributed to many publications, including The New York Times Magazine , Harper's , The New Republic , and Vox . He was the first staff writer of the art publication Hyperallergic. Kyle is also the co-founder of Study Hall, an online community for journalists, and Dirt, a newsletter about digital culture. He lives in Washington, D.C.