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sineadw9 's review for:
Filterworld: How Algorithms Flattened Culture
by Kyle Chayka
informative
reflective
medium-paced
This book is a sort of methodical unpacking of cultural curation in the “age of the algorithm”, through the lens and experiences of the author.
While I felt it lost momentum/belaboured the point in a few parts, I’m glad to have read it. It’s helped me recognize and be critical of the way I consume culture, especially how I discover and judge it. Chayka mostly does a good job of criticizing social media and technology companies without disparaging their users.
Big takeaway? The internet has changed incentives around the creation of cultural artefacts, and in doing so, changed our behaviours around them. It’s incentivized engagement with *any* content over the quality of the content itself, and removed the context, friction, human curation, and self-discovery of past mediums. Also, we don’t physically own content in the way we used to.
Long review lol but final thoughts - would love to read a version of this from the perspective of global and marginalized communities - I feel this POV is really relevant to the points in this book and might challenge some elements of Chayka’s thesis.
While I felt it lost momentum/belaboured the point in a few parts, I’m glad to have read it. It’s helped me recognize and be critical of the way I consume culture, especially how I discover and judge it. Chayka mostly does a good job of criticizing social media and technology companies without disparaging their users.
Big takeaway? The internet has changed incentives around the creation of cultural artefacts, and in doing so, changed our behaviours around them. It’s incentivized engagement with *any* content over the quality of the content itself, and removed the context, friction, human curation, and self-discovery of past mediums. Also, we don’t physically own content in the way we used to.
Long review lol but final thoughts - would love to read a version of this from the perspective of global and marginalized communities - I feel this POV is really relevant to the points in this book and might challenge some elements of Chayka’s thesis.