The Gate Keepers
‘Filterworld’ is Kyle Chayka’s term for the systems of algorithmic recommendations that make up an ever greater part of contemporary life. In this collection of determining feeds we find Google, Amazon, Spotify, Netflix, Airbnb, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube and many more. Taken together, they make up a high-powered and hugely influential complex of dynamic […]
Beyond Defiance
A People Under Siege: The Unionists of Northern Ireland, from Partition to Brexit and Beyond, by Aaron Edwards, Merrion Press, 360 pp, €19.99, ISBN: 978-1785372995 The Ghost Limb: Alternative Protestants and the Spirit of 1798, by Claire Mitchell, Beyond the Pale Books, 256 pp, £15, ISBN: 978-1914318191 As the social and political ground shifts in […]
The Devouring Mind
Maestros & Monsters: Days & Nights with Susan Sontag & George Steiner, by Robert Boyers, Mandel Vilar Press/Dryad Press, 256 pp, $24.95, ISBN: 978-1942134886 Many critics – and critics are my subject here – spend their lives adding tile after tile to the mosaic of a False Self. A university degree, a glittering essay, an […]
Rage for Profit
There was a drumbeat for RTÉ blood-letting coursing through Irish newspapers in the latter part of 2023, a heady staccato of accusations in bold headlines: bad management and weak governance at the national broadcaster, secret pay deals, scandalous spending, hidden slush funds … debacle, furore, fiasco, farce! This was probably the worst emergency to have […]