You might have heard that algorithms are in control of everything you hear, read, and see. They control the next song on your Spotify playlist, or what YouTube suggests you watch after you finish a video. Algorithms are perhaps why you can't escape Sabrina Carpenter's hit song 'Espresso' or why you might have suddenly been struck by the desire to buy one of those pastel-colored Stanley cups. They dictate how TV shows are made and which books get published'a revolutionary paradigm shift that's become fully entrenched in the arts and media, and isn't going away anytime soon. In 2024, culture is boring and stale due to the algorithms calling the shots on what gets produced and praised'or so the critics say. The New Yorker staff writer Kyle Chayka wrote an entire book about how Big Tech has successfully 'flattened culture' into a series of facsimile coffee shops and mid-century-modern furniture. The critic Jason Farago argued in The New York Times Magazine that 'the plunge through our...
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