' The story told here is instrumental to your own' - Jared Lanier ' Timely erudite
important' - Ayad Akhtar What happens when our cultural and artistic lives are dictated
to us by an algorithm? What does it mean when shareability supersedes innovation? How can we
make a choice when the options have been so carefully arranged for us? From coffee shops to
city grids to TikTok feeds and Netflix homepages the world over algorithmic recommendations
prescribe our experiences. This network of mathematically determined choices - the '
Filterworld' - has taken over almost unnoticed as we' ve grown accustomed to an
insipid new normal. But to have our tastes behaviours and emotions governed by computers
calls the very notion of free will into question. Internationally recognized journalist and
New Yorker staff writer Kyle Chayka journeys through this ever-tightening web woven by
algorithms. He explores how online and offline spaces alike have been engineered for seamless
consumption. How the lowest common denominator is promoted at the expense of the complex
diverse or challenging. How users of technology contend with data-driven equations that promise
to anticipate their desires but often get them wrong. How the FIlterworld is determining the
very shape of culture itself. Chayka skilfully and compellingly traces this creeping
machine-guided curation that influences not just what culture we consume but what culture is
produced. In doing so he attempts to answer to the most urgent question currently facing us:
is personal freedom ever again possible on the Internet? Filterworld is a fascinating history
of the rise of the algorithm and an important investigation into where it could take us next -
if we let it.
