Filterworld

'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 Filterworldwill 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
'An essential book for anyone questioning if their phones are "listening" to them.' * i-D *
'The promise of the Internet is that it is boundless, full of original content and unique cultural connections. So why does everything look, sound and feel the same? Kyle Chayka's insightful and timely book explains how big tech's algorithms have homogenized our experiences for profit, and too often left us poorer for it.' -- James Griffiths, author of The Great Firewall of China and Speak Not
'Filterworld incisively diagnoses a problem that I've long felt but struggled to name and is the most convincing explanation I've encountered for why so many of our cultural products carry an uncanny whiff of familiarity. Amidst cheers for the death of the monoculture, Chayka offers a sharp and necessary counterpoint, demonstrating how mass culture, even as it diffuses into niche datastreams, trends toward a vacuous mean.' -- Meghan O’Gieblyn, author of God, Human, Animal, Machine
'Fascinating and deeply enlightening' * Spectator *
'Chilling ... evocative ... incisive' * Wall Street Journal *
'Brings stark clarity to the formulas that guide our behaviours online ... it does the near impossible: it makes algorithms, those dull formulas of inputs and outputs, fascinating' -- Megan Garber * The Atlantic *
'Unlike the cascade of content from strangers on the internet, Filterworld, as a proper book will, evokes less transient impulses than genuine, lingering feelings: depression about our big-box corporate dystopia and admiration for Chayka's curiosity and clear writing style' * New York Times *
'If our old tech anxiety amounted to well-founded paranoia ("Are they tracking me? Of course they are."), the new fear in Filterworld is more existential: "Do I really like this? Am I really like this?" ...[With Filterworld] Chayka offers an alternative to the numbing flow of the feed' * Esquire *
'Filterworld nearly vibrates ... Chayka brings his background as an art critic and curator to the fore. He positions curators as a potential salve for our current cultural malaise, a sort of anti-Mechanical Turk that rejects computational sleights of hand in favor of deep, patient research' * Los Angeles Review of Books *
'Filterworld is the kind of book worth wrestling with, critiquing, and absorbing deeply' * Elle Magazine *
'Intriguing - and distressing ... Chayka's timely investigation shows how we can reject the algorithms of the digital era and reclaim our humanity' * Kirkus Reviews *
'Chayka's logic is seductive. The internet of today, where Filterworld's impact is most keenly felt, is both less weird and more corporate than anyone who lived through the GeoCities era could have possibly imagined. There's a palpable sense of grief in Filterworld when Chayka describes the walls of the internet closing in as it consolidated onto privately owned platforms' * Washington Post *