Filterworld

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.

From coffee shops to city grids to TikTok feeds and Netflix homepages the world round, algorithmic recommendations dictate 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.

Filterworld traces this creeping, machine-guided curation that influences not just what culture we consume, but what culture is produced. And it finds answers to the most urgent questions: What happens when shareability supersedes innovation? 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?