Filterworld: How Algorithms Flattened Culture

One of the BBC's most anticipated books for 2024

'The story told here is instrumental to your own' - Jared Lanier
'Timely, erudite, important' - Ayad Akhtar

What happens when our cultural and artistic lives are dictated to us by an algorithm? What does it mean when shareability supersedes innovation? How can we make a choice when the options have been so carefully arranged for us?

From coffee shops to city grids to TikTok feeds and Netflix homepages the world over, algorithmic recommendations prescribe our experiences. This network of mathematically determined choices - the 'Filterworld' - has taken over, almost unnoticed, as we've grown accustomed to an insipid new normal. But to have our tastes, behaviours, and emotions governed by computers calls the very notion of free will into question.

Internationally recognized journalist and