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3.79 AVERAGE
3.79 AVERAGE
challenging
funny
hopeful
informative
reflective
slow-paced
challenging
reflective
informative
medium-paced
One of the most relevant books I've read about our current cultural climate. Provides a healthy skepticism about algorithms and our relationship to them. I'm glad Chayka steered towards a hopeful instructive towards the end of the book too, providing some thoughts on how we can improve our online world moving forward.
informative
reflective
medium-paced
challenging
informative
reflective
medium-paced
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
informative
reflective
slow-paced
Quotes and thoughts I want to keep accessible:
- "Consumption without taste is just undiluted accelerated capitalism. There are two forces forming our taste [independent pursuit of what we individually enjoy] & [our awareness of what it appears most other people like, the dominant mainstream]" (meaning: taste needs to be formed by subtle simmering of slowly enjoying something you didn't before, instead of getting smacked over the head / told to like it)
- "In Filterworld, culture is becoming more ambient. Like Sleepify, it's designed to be ignored. Or like the Marvel movie franchise, no single moment or fragment of it is particularly significant, because there is always more to be consumed. When we embrace ambience, we lose the meaning of the finite and the discrete."
- We feel at home everywhere because everything feels the same. You can get an AirBnB, then an uber from place to place that looks like a place that looks like home, then pay with your phone instead of that country's currency. "Such tools have a way of making places feel slightly meaningless, since they can be navigated by phone. The city becomes a backdrop to the omniscient screen, falling into the space of flows." Learning: Add friction back to your day
- "All culture is now content"
- "Digging deeper was once the defining task of finding culture, particularly in the early internet. ... Forums were communities of consumption ... around a particular shared pursuit. ... Form of mutual learning." Learning: Today's algorithms are less conducive to mutual learning because it isn't what anyone is passionate about, just fed. How can I create friction in my life to have deeper engagement with content and culture?
- "In the moment, the content feels all encompassing, and yet it's totally insignificant once you wander away." Learning: "Seek out the seams of culture yourself, and chart your own path."
- "The way to fight the generic is to seek the specific, whatever you are drawn toward." Learning: Don't let the algorithm decide your taste. All it takes to form your own taste is "thought, intention, and care."
informative
reflective
medium-paced
I was sold on this book until the AirBnb chapter. I am not sold that the algorithm has negatively "flattened' culture. In fact, what was most interesting was the inside view of algorithms and how they work per company and less the authors own opinions about what is and is not culture.
Like a lot of nonfiction I've read, I feel like this could have been a blog post.
I definitely recommend this book - whether or not you're already disillusioned by "the algorithm."
I particularly enjoyed the way the Chayka first established what "the algorithm" is, mathematically, and emphasized that it is not a thing of it's own, but that it is a tool that companies choose to use. I also appreciated that although the author was making an argument that culture should be curated by humans, they did acknowledge how and why people can become dependent on sites that use it (namely artists, as it is currently the best way to reach an audience).
This was very interesting and accessible/readable. This review is for the audio version but I believe that a written version would be nearly as understandable.
On a personal note, I’m looking to slowmax this year as much as I can. This helped lay some of the groundwork for that by showing how only consuming culture online often restricts interests to the most widely accepted topics. This leads me to engage with more topics/items shallowly, whereas my slowmaxing resolution would be better filled by engaging deeply on topics that I find intriguing. I think we may have known this - but it was good to hear it out loud.
I particularly enjoyed the way the Chayka first established what "the algorithm" is, mathematically, and emphasized that it is not a thing of it's own, but that it is a tool that companies choose to use. I also appreciated that although the author was making an argument that culture should be curated by humans, they did acknowledge how and why people can become dependent on sites that use it (namely artists, as it is currently the best way to reach an audience).
This was very interesting and accessible/readable. This review is for the audio version but I believe that a written version would be nearly as understandable.
On a personal note, I’m looking to slowmax this year as much as I can. This helped lay some of the groundwork for that by showing how only consuming culture online often restricts interests to the most widely accepted topics. This leads me to engage with more topics/items shallowly, whereas my slowmaxing resolution would be better filled by engaging deeply on topics that I find intriguing. I think we may have known this - but it was good to hear it out loud.