Kyle Chayka's Filterworld: How Algorithms Flattened Culture is engaging, refined, and well-composed. My only objections pertain to its startlingly flimsy thesis, its parodically bleak tone, and nearly every argument it makes.
Chayka's theory is that, on an internet now dominated by algorithmic recommendations, culture has become insipid, generic, and "marked by a pervasive sense of sameness." He outlines this thesis with the style and erudition you would expect from a staff writer for The New Yorker (which he is). His extended lament is peppered with witty insights, leavened with arresting similes, and garnished with learned citations to such works as Jun'ichirō Tanizaki's In Praise of Shadows and Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time.
