Today, I’m talking to Kyle Chayka, a staff writer for The New Yorker, a regular contributor to The Verge, and author of the new book Filterworld: How Algorithms Flattened Culture. Kyle has been writing for years now about how the culture of big social media platforms bleeds into real life, first affecting how things look, and now shaping how and what culture is created and the mechanisms by which that culture spreads all around the world.
Kyle wrote a fantastic feature for The Verge back in 2016 called “Welcome to AirSpace,” which was an early exploration of this idea. At the time, he noted that the aesthetics of physical spaces, like coffee shops and co-working offices, were being heavily influenced by Airbnb and Instagram, flattening…
