Have Algorithms Destroyed Personal Taste?

“We are no longer sitting in a restaurant, ordering our own meal,“ Alexandra Hildreth explained of the this tension materializing in fashion, of those who are dressed “by” the algorithm versus those who are informed by other inputs. The same can be said of ideologies, of approaches to the world. “We are at an all you can eat sushi conveyor belt, wh... See more

Our culture seems to be spiraling into a feedback loop of homogenized thoughts and ideas, where originality is sidelined in favor of the predictable and the algorithmically optimized. In fact, one of those machines wrote the last 28 words, from “our culture seems” on.

The problem here is our obsession with popularity. We’ve been imbued with popularity contests since the beginning of our social lives. We’ve been primed to assess cultural output by how many others liked it. Movie and music studios, fashion conglomerates, publishers, social media, and other cultural industries generate efficient formulas to create ... See more