Filterworld
23 January 2024Imprint: Heligo Books
Synopsis
One of the BBC's most anticipated books for 2024
An i-D non-fiction book of 2024
A Stylist non-fiction book of 2024
'An essential book' i-D
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.
An i-D non-fiction book of 2024
A Stylist non-fiction book of 2024
'An essential book' i-D
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.
Details
23 January 2024304 pages
9781788706971Imprint: Heligo Books
Reviews
'Necessary reading for anyone who has wondered just how, in expanding our world, the internet has ended up emptying our experience of it. [...] Timely, erudite, important.'Ayad Akhtar, Pulitzer Prize winner and author of Homeland Elegies
'Kyle Chayka is a vital observer of how digital technology shapes our culture, and Filterworld will change how you think about the internet. In his invigorating new book, Chayka demonstrates how everything from movies to music, design, media, and travel is at the mercy of algorithms.'Ben Smith, author of Traffic: Genius, Rivalry, and Delusion in the Billion-Dollar Race to Go Viral
'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. [...] Filterworld is required reading for anyone who uses the Internet.'Taylor Lorenz, author of Extremely Online...
'Filterworld skillfully interrogates how the giant project of measuring humanity using the internet turned into an unfortunate modification of humanity. The story told here is instrumental to your own, even if you do not realize it.'Jaron Lanier, author of Dawn of the New Everything and The Father of Virtual Reality
