Can We Resist the Age of the Algorithm?

While the obstruction of taste and the tactic of corrupt personalization may feel like individual problems—users must work harder to identify what they truly like—it also quickly scales up into massive social issues. When millions of consumers are subtly misled and thus ultimately fed what they consume, certain kinds of culture are choked off from

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This problem is almost impossible to fix in a culture that relies heavily on algorithms. The algorithm is, by definition, a repeating pattern that always looks backward. It does something in the future based on what worked in the past.

So the algorithm that recommends music or videos on a web platform will never deliver a totally fresh and new expe... See more

In so many cases, the culture disseminated through algorithmic feeds is either designed to produce a sensory void or to be flattened into the background of life, an insidious degradation of the status of art into something more like wallpaper. While personalized feeds create algorithmic anxiety, the only salve they provide is this form of ambient c

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