Algorithmic!

 

If you don’t want to read the book,
there’s an excerpt HERE.

Filterworld: How Algorithms Flattened Culture is an amusing new book by Kyle Chayka. The underlying premise of the book is that the world has been “flattened” by computer recommendation programs that solicit “likes” and “views” and make algorithm-driven secret calculations to guide one’s choices and expectations of culture. In Chayka’s world, music means Spotify-recommended lists; Netflix tells you which films and streaming series to watch; art and poetry show up on his TikTok or Instagram posts; travel is validated by Instagrammable selfies; self-published Kindle Books are a type of literature. These and all the other influencer-created tastes occupy a big part of the modern cultural universe. This was his world for a long time, and he thinks many people still live in this world.

Take, for example, coffee shops: Chayka finds that every coffee shop in the world looks like every other one. They have the same color scheme, the same furniture, the same flat white coffee, and even avocado toast (which he mentions ironically, sort of). Except then he contradicts himself — what he really means is that in every city in the world he can FIND a particular kind of coffee shop: the hipster coffee shop where cool people like him want to hang out and open their laptops. And then it becomes obvious that he doesn’t mean every city in the world, just the places that thirty-something hipsters like him have been Internet-influenced to visit. Ditto AirB&Bs: all look alike because then the algorithms top-recommend them. Ditto airports, except they already all looked alike decades ago. TikTok, Instagram, Youtube, Facebook —  “likes” or other signs of popularity algorithmically determine tastes and choices, and pressure conformity from the creators of such spaces.

For example, what is Chayka’s paradigm of a coffee shop?

“I could quickly identify a café among the search results that had the requisite qualities: plentiful daylight through large storefront windows; industrial-size wood tables for accessible seating; a bright interior with walls painted white or covered in subway tiles; and Wi-Fi available for writing or procrastinating.” (p. 89)

Yeah, I see what he means. I live in a kind of hipster town, and just in the past couple days I’ve been to the kind of coffee shops he means. I checked my photos and found quite a few coffee shop-type places where I’ve been recently. Plus one old one. I’ve interspersed my photos with quotes from Chayka’s book to highlight some ideas he is presenting.

Coffee Shops

Ann Arbor: note the industrial lighting which the author considers typical.

“Building your own sense of taste, that set of subconscious principles by which you identify what you like, is an uphill battle compared to passively consuming whatever content feeds deliver to you.” (p. 51)

Ann Arbor, Argus Coffee House.

“The force of algorithmic pressure is not theoretical. It’s not a gloomy dystopian future but, rather, a pervading force that is already influencing cultural consumers and creators.” (p. 56)

Miriam’s favorite (Shenandoah Joe’s publicity photo).

“‘Ownership is the most intimate relationship that one can have to objects. … Not that they have come alive in him; it is he who lives in them.’ In other words, we often discover, and even rediscover, ourselves in what we keep around us. But that codependence or co-evolution of collection and person wouldn’t happen if the order of Walter Benjamin’s shelves and the catalog of his books kept changing every few months. … The collector is the only one who decides how to arrange their possessions, ordering books by author, title, theme, or even color of the cover—and they stay in the same places they’re put. That’s not true of our digital cultural interfaces, which follow the whims and priorities of the technology companies that own them. If Spotify suddenly gives the category of podcasts a prominent new placement, for example, it’s because the company has decided that podcasts are going to make up more of its revenue in the future.” (p. 75)

Charlottesville, VA

“‘Just as the entire mode of existence of human collectives changes over long historical periods, so too does their mode of perception,’ Benjamin wrote.“ (p. 275)

Ann Arbor summertime.

“But there was also something missing: I wasn’t surprising myself with the unfamiliar during traveling, just reaffirming the superiority of my own sense of taste by finding it in a new place. Maybe that’s why it felt hollow.” (p. 109)

Ann Arbor — a sushi place, same vibe. 

“MFA programs influenced mid-century novels. Novelists-turned-professors, taking jobs to support their writing practice, tutored their students at institutions like the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, often pushing them toward a style of self-conscious literary realism from a personal perspective. Wendell Berry, Richard Ford, Michael Chabon, Rick Moody, and Tama Janowitz were some of the successes of the MFA-program model.” (p. 145)

Ann Arbor: Venue Cafe, in our neighborhood.

“My point is not that we must gather an understanding of art only through museum exhibitions; rather, it’s that the view we have of culture through algorithmic feeds is often so blinkered as to be useless. We’re not encouraged or informed enough to get beyond it.” (p. 248)

Ann Arbor: note the industrial ceiling with banners, and the transgressive wall color.

“You are unique, just like everybody else.” (p. 96)

A classic "Instagram" cafe photo (according to the author) that I took in Holland in 2014.

The “Instagram Wall”

Another very amusing passage in Filterworld describes the rise in popularity of murals being painted on walls throughout the world, especially a phenomenon he calls “The Instagram Wall.” I’ve been very aware of the international presence of street art and murals through participating in a weekly blog event hosted by a blogger named Sami who lives in Australia; each week, bloggers from almost every continent contribute photos of murals that they have found — I don’t know if it’s “algorithmic” but it’s definitely a cultural commonality spread through the internet. Chayka writes:

“In the early 2010s, a new phenomenon emerged called an “Instagram wall.” In part, it was an outgrowth of the street-art movement of the 2000s, a gentrification of graffiti that saw clean, officially sanctioned murals take over city walls, particularly in neighborhoods where decrepit warehouses were plentiful. … The epitome of the Instagram wall, one of its most popular tropes, was a pair of angelic wings unfurling to the left and right of an empty space where a person would stand, often stretching their arms upward as if taking flight.” (p. 106)

This is me at an Instagram Wall in NorthEast, Maryland, last April.
I didn’t know it was an Instagram Wall. (I drew the angel gown onto my photo.)
I know of at least two examples of these “wings” here in Ann Arbor as well.

What does the author mean by the term algorithmic?

Chayka writes:

“‘Algorithmic’ has become a byword for anything that feels too slick, too reductive, or too optimized for attracting attention: a combination of high production values with little concern for fundamental content.” (p. 140)

“Algorithmic feeds are different from other iterations of technological innovation because they do not just present us with an unusual new format to consider, like camera film or the television screen. They also try to anticipate our individual cultural desires for us in personalized recommendations using the newfound tools of data surveillance and machine learning. Algorithmic feeds stand between the human creators and the human consumers, making an infinite series of decisions about culture.” (p. 278) 

The alternative to the algorithmic feed from online apps like TikTok, Facebook, Netflix, Amazon, etc. is (kind of obviously) to find a curated list of the artistic or cultural material you seek. Curators, as I think everyone knows, are humans who select books, films, music, art, etc. Chayka describes a few of his preferred human curators in the book. He says, “independent radio DJs have stuck out in my mind as an ideal form of non-algorithmic cultural distribution.” (p. 250) He points to the Criterion Collection of films, which was founded in 1984: a staff of critics select classic films for their lasting value. These are published in DVD or other editions, and made available for purchase. Also, Chayka describes his interview with a curator at the Museum of Modern Art in New York: museum curators being an obvious example of "curation." This part of the book seemed a bit obvious.

Most of Chayka’s descriptions of algorithmic culture in his experience of modern life are penetrating and rather amusing, though he does get kind of preachy at times. He has a lot to say. His examples are almost exclusively based on his own experiences, which is a point of weakness to some extent. But it’s mainly interesting reading.

Photos and review © 2024 mae e. sander

Shared with Deb at Readerbuzz and Sami’s  murals.