Filterworld: algorithmic anxiety is flattening our culture

The rule of vanilla lets our unfeeling gadgets decide what’s best for us.

Simon Burton-Jones

Simon is Bishop of Tonbridge in the Diocese of Rochester. He writes regularly round social, cultural and political issues.

A podcast guest speaks in front of a mic.

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Sebastian Pandelache on Unsplash.

Here’s another diagnosis to add to modern malaise: algorithmic anxiety. It’s described by Kyle Chayka in his excellent book Filterworld (Heligo Books, 2024) as the:

…awareness that we must constantly contend with automated technological processes beyond our understanding and control, whether in our Facebook feeds, Google Maps driving directions, or Amazon product promotions.

We don’t understand algorithms. Even if we did, we wouldn’t know how they actually work on us as every tech company keeps it a secret, lest competitors learn from them. This has led to the algorithm becoming the century’s newest bogeyman, a phantom we can reference in conversation to make us sound tech savvy and culturally knowing even while we remain in the dark.

‘Algorithmic has become a byword for anything that feels too slick, too reductive, or too optimised for attracting attention’.

Kyle Chayka

One of the oddest outcomes of the ascendency of the algorithm is the seemingly diametric effects on politics and culture. In politics it has polarised people, sorting us into opposing camps and then ensuring we hear only good things about our ‘side’ and only maddening things about the ‘opposing’ side. Instead of calmly listening to a different view, we hurl insults, as performative as Prime Minister’s Question Time and about as enlightening.

Something different is happening with culture. Here, the algorithm makes culture more homogenous; in the words of Kyle Chayka, it is ‘flattened’. The basic rule of what he calls Filterworld is that ‘the popular becomes more popular, and the obscure becomes even less visible’. It is a strange re-mix of Jesus for the digital age: ‘to all those who have, more will be given…but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away.

The life of an Instagram post is said to be determined in the first five minutes. If it has engagement, it can be sure of more; if it gets none, it will sink. Visibility on social media is vital for artists of all kinds, because this is where all publicity begins. Artists try and game the system, figuring out what kind of content the algorithm will promote. In the process, their creative expression is subtly compromised. People begin to write in a style that gets attention, and what gets attention is decided by the algorithm. Those who tweet will know how the short, pared back medium starts to influence their life away from X. Musicians know that art which is safe and mainstream – the public’s crowded middle where performers like Ed Sheeran have thrived – is likely to succeed.

‘Much of culture now has the hollow, vacant feeling of having been made by algorithm’ according to the cultural commentator Dean Kissick. Chayka observes that: ‘algorithmic has become a byword for anything that feels too slick, too reductive, or too optimised for attracting attention’.

It is often at the margins that breakthroughs emerge; art that makes us see this world in a new and divine light.

There is a valid counter to this development. Previously, what we read, heard and saw as cultural consumers was determined by a small set of experts who filtered content for us. These experts were often drawn from a narrow section of society who inevitably brought their own biases to bear. While this may be true, it is hardly a triumph for the public to have an unfeeling gadget decide what’s best for them, based on what we have liked before and what seems to appeal to most people. At the ice cream vendor, this is like reaching for vanilla every time.

The truth is, in necessarily surrendering to the algorithm (for what alternative is there online?) we miss huge volumes of culture that might appeal to us. It is about as effective as deciding what sea life we like based only on what pops up to the surface of the water.

The best art is not always the most popular and there is a risk that the divine spark of invention that the creator God has placed within each of us – the unlimited potential of being made in the image of God – will not be fanned into existence as often as it could be. Chasing likes is no substitute for patient inspiration. It is often at the margins that breakthroughs emerge; art that makes us see this world in a new and divine light.

‘Behold, I am making all things new’ says the one who sits on the throne in Revelation. That algorithms are making all things similar is the reality we are learning to live with.

Review

Culture

Economics

Trust

21 November 2025

5 min read

Money’s hidden meanings in a contactless age

The Bank of England Museum reveals the symbolism, morality and power woven into the history of money

Susan Gray

Susan is a writer specialising in visual arts and contributes to Art Quarterly, The Tablet, Church Times and Discover Britain.

The Bank of England vaults.

Bank of England.

Our era of contactless payments obscures the symbolism once lavished on money. But the rich history of meaning, morality and power, layered into everyday transactions, is uncovered at an exhibition at the Bank of England Museum

Building the Bank celebrates 100 years of the current Bank of England building, on the site of Sir John Soane’s original structure, completed in 1827. Surveying a century makes past practices seem quaint: until 1973 the institution was guarded by the Bank Piquet military guard. A 1961 photo shows 12 Guardsmen with bearskin hats and bayonets, together with a drummer or piper, a sergeant and an officer, marching into the Threadneedle Streer entrance. Even now, when the wealth of most people in developed countries is contained in data warehouses, 400,000 gold bars are held in vaults deep beneath the Bank.

Faiths have grappled with money’s impact for millennia. Christianity’s relationship with money is tinged with unease, as St Paul’s oft misquoted letter to Timothy illustrates: “For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.” Personally, the immobilising feeling of envy, particularly if it is towards friends, does feel exactly like being pierced with blinding toxicity.

Contrastingly, in Hinduism pursuing wealth is one of four pillars of faith, called Artha. In Hinduism attempting to attain material wealth is part of attempting to attain salvation.

Herbert Baker, architect of the Bank of England, embodies moral ambiguity around faith and money. Buried in Westminster Abbey, and architect of Church House next door, Baker established his reputation working for Cecil Rhodes, prime minister of the Cape Colony 1890- 96. Vicar’s son Rhodes is now seen as paving the way for apartheid in southern Africa, and imposing an economically exploitive, racist, and imperialist system on the region. Baker also worked with better- known Edwin Lutyens on government buildings in New Delhi from 1912, declaring of the British Raj’s new seat of power “it must not be Indian, nor English, nor Roman, but it must be Imperial”.

After World War One, Soane’s bank was too small to house the increased staff numbers needed to service the ballooning national debt and financial complexity of the Roaring Twenties. Bordered by major roads at the heart of the City of London, the institution’s footprint could not expand, so Herbert created a design incorporating some of Soane’s classical aspects, but with floors at a greater depth and height than its processor.

From grand gestures to tiny details, classical mythology is a key element of the Bank’s design. Sculptor Charles Wheeler modelled doorknobs showing the face of Mercury. Mercury is the patron deity of finance and communication. Tiles for an officials’ lunchroom show a caduceus, with two bright blue snakes, tails entwined, framing Mercury’s face. Caducei are the symbol of commerce, representing reciprocity and mutually beneficial transactions.

Forty caryatids, the classical female form used in place of a pillar in Greek architecture, were salvaged from Soane’s building and reused. Some caryatids are in the area where old banknotes can be exchanged, besides the museum, now the only part of the Bank open to the public.

Outside, on the dome at the northwest corner of the bank, a gilt bronze statue of Ariel, named after the spirit of the air in The Tempest, represents “the dynamic spirit of the Bank which carries Credit and Trust over the wide world.”

The image of banks as depositories of trust and positive relationships took a pasting worldwide during the 2008 Credit Crisis and lean years that followed. But in 2015 former Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, argues that banking services are a key part of functioning communities, and banks should be able to put people before profit. “At the heart of both these expectations is the value of the person as sacred, and all other things as secondary to human dignity. It is a value rooted in many faiths and especially in our Judaeo-Christian tradition. Of course profits have to be made, but they need to be measured not only in terms of their absolute return on capital employed, but also in terms of the human cost of achieving that return.

“Large institutions with adequate balance sheets working to maximise returns from those who can most afford it do not produce a sustainable society in the long term. Such an approach is narrow-minded and short-termist, because sustainable societies are essential to the large companies within them. It is also an immoral approach.”

Mosaics created by Boris Anrep idealise the Bank’ of England’s sunnier intentions towards the wider community. Anrep also designed mosaics for Westminster Cathedral, Tate Britain and the National Gallery. For the Bank, a tiny coin from the reign of Henry VIII known as the George Noble, the first time St George and the dragon appeared on English coinage, was magnified into a roundel showing the galloping saint, visor up, lancing the prostate dragon at the base. The George Noble was one of 50 designs, based on advances in coinage, gracing the Bank’s corridors.

At the main entrance, a mosaic showing a pillar, representing the Bank, is guarded by two lions, referencing the sculpture from Mycenae. The Bank’s global role, and place at the centre of the then British Empire is shown by the constellations of the Plough and Southern Cross, representing the southern and northern hemispheres.

An image of the Empire Clock Baker made for the Bank, - now disassembled - shows an ornate dial, marked in 24 sections, with the sun representing India and an anchor symbolising the port cities of Singapore and Hong Kong.

In 1946 the Bank of England was nationalised, formalising its role as a public institution, operating in a post war decolonialising world, totally different to the one its building had been designed for just 20 years before.

Systems and symbols around money mutate with the times. Money’s intangibility in our time of app and tap payment, makes its power less distinct than in the days of gold sovereigns. But we fool ourselves if we say money is unimportant, because all of history says otherwise.

Building the Bank, Bank of England Museum, until 2026

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