Noah’s Reviews > Filterworld: How Algorithms Flattened Culture > Status Update

“In filterworld, it becomes hard to separate the nature of something, or its reality, from its popularity in terms of attention. Popularity alone often gets confused for meaning and significance.” - 121

There is now a generic global consumer, whose preferences and desires are molded more by the platforms they use then where they live. In some cases, we conduct our lives more in the space of [platforms] than in the [geographical space in which we live]. Along with our world, we are now flat, too. - 104

“Algorithmic anxiety is something of a contemporary plague…there’s an emotional fallout to this quest for attention: we end up both overstimulated and numb, much like glassy eyes slots player waiting for matching symbols to come up.” - 40

“Quality is subjective. Data alone, in the absence of human judgment, can only go so far in gauging it.”