Life in the Algorithm
The outcome of such algorithmic gatekeeping is the pervasive flattening that has been happening across culture. By fatness I mean homogenization but also a reduction into simplicity: the least ambiguous, least disruptive, and perhaps least meaningful pieces of culture are promoted the most.
Flatness is the lowest common denominator, an averageness t
... See moreomnipresent technologies that are governed according to opaque algorithms and whose often-arbitrary, hugely consequential decisions are outside the reach of existing laws. Seen in that context, it shouldn’t be a surprise that her state of alarm resonated with people who came across her videos.
Naomi Klein • Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World
Here, consciousness is doubled once through the gaze of the dominant culture and then redoubled as the algorithm’s fun-house mirror amplifies the ideals conveyed through that gaze. With search, it happened to information; with commerce, it happened to products; with social media, it happened, finally, to our selves. If technological capitalism can
... See moreVauhini Vara • Searches: Selfhood in the Digital Age
In recent years, an underlying sense has emerged that algorithmic culture is shallow, cheap, and degraded in the washed-out manner of a photocopy copied many times over.
Kyle Chayka • Filterworld
