What algorithms want : imagination in the age of computing

This book looks at “algorithmic culture machines” - all the ways algorithms and computation steer our everyday, our knowledge systems, our culture. How they shape us and also make us shape ourselves in order to accommodate them. Drawing upon all the usual suspects, like Netflix, PageRank, Uber, Bitcoin, Gamification ... but looking at it more from a Media studies and humanities perspective.

The text is approachable yet still reads so very academic in its structure and in how it weaves in and then is glued to its references and metaphors. Which was mildly entertaining (hey, I remember texts like these) and then also mildly annoying (namedropping Bush's memex, sure, but do we really need to draw a long analogy between it and today's knowledge culture). Also, partially it felt the author was more concerned with making a clever metaphorical statement, than to get all the details right. But, still worth it though.