The Tastemaker and the Algorithm

The coda to this book, for which I was the General Editor, reflects on one of the aims for our book, which was to identify the contradictions that are inherent in the persistence of the social value created by taste. I discuss this with reference to Michael Bhaskar’s book Curation (2016). Bhaskar’s arguments for the continuity of tastemaking are made against the background of the supersession of individual choice by impersonal algorithms. I suggest that it may be more important to consider the possibility that the confrontation between the tastemaker and the algorithm, rather than making the tastemaker more important than ever, could reveal the insupportable contradictions of taste and the anachronism of its model of value.