Filterworld

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I think I may have had my fill of AI, algorithm and surveillance capitalism books this year. Filterworld was a bit of a slog and probably could have been an essay. I wanted to like Kyle Chayka and resisted the urge to put his book down after one too many “get off my lawn” digital hipster moments. Thankfully, it was only near the end when he related that he loved Coltrane’s My Favorite Things and never heard until later in his adult life the musical version. That was a bit much and would have tipped me into rare DNF territory if it had been in the first couple of chapters. But, there was enough insight into some general truths around culture, Spotify, Instagram and Facebook that I stayed till the last page. His experience of a digital cleanse was good reading and I appreciated his celebration of non-algorithmic social media and content sources. It was, if nothing else, thought-provoking. 3/5.