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

“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

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 😇

One of the most important books of this time

Profound, inspiring and very important for understanding the current state of our culture. A must. Thanks (to the algorithm?) that made me discover 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.

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.

Filterworld - A timely study of the reliance on AI algorithms over human curation of culture

This is a persuasive look at the pervasive role of AI algorithms in contemporary human affairs and how this trend “flattens” our cultural landscape by diminishing the role of human intervention. Now that human curation has ceded preeminence to algorithmic preference-setting, our choices tend to be weighted toward the least common denominator with results and suggestions being less unique and sometimes, even divergent from our inner tastes. This is especially apparent in the algorithmic curation of our musical selections.

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?

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!