Filterworld: How Algorithms Flattened Culture by Kyle Chayka. Doubleday, 304 pp., $28.
The algorithm has our attention. It befuddles and bewilders, surprises and preoccupies, sucking us in like a vacuum, and spitting us out like a blowhole. Dayna Tortorici understood and articulated this better than many of us ever could in her hugely popular essay “My Instagram,” which captured and perpetuated our frenetic zeal for the algorithm and our discussion of it. Running in issue 36 of n+1 four years ago, the piece is the fourteenth most-read essay in the first twenty years of the publication’s history. Through the story of how she slowly but methodically became addicted to Instagram, Tortorici depicted a pivotal moment in time: roughly 2013 to 2015, when Instagram was still in its near-Beta phase, trying to mimic through its icon and filters the design and effects of a Lomography camera. We were all just beginning to realize the addictive power the algorithm might one day wield. Tortorici’s recounting of her discovery of Instagram’s world of superh…