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Searches: Selfhood in the Digital Age
From the author of The Immortal King Rao, finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, a personal and provocative exploration of how technology companies have reshaped human language, and, if we let them, could steal it from us
When it was released to the public in November 2022, ChatGPT awakened the world to a secretive teaching A.I.-powered machines to write and talk like human beings. Its creators had a sweeping ambition—to get machines to communicate for us. But if this came to pass, would it be liberation or subjugation?
Vauhini Vara, an award-winning tech journalist and editor, had long been grappling with this question. In 2021, she used a predecessor of ChatGPT to write about her sister’s death, resulting in an essay that was both more moving and more disturbing than she could have imagined. It quickly went viral.
The experience, revealing both the appeal and the danger of corporate-owned language machines, forced Vara to interrogate how technology has changed how she uses language, from discovering online chat rooms as a preteen, to using social media as the Wall Street Journal�s first Facebook reporter, to testing early versions of ChatGPT—all while adding to the trove of human-created material that Big Tech exploits. Interspersed throughout this investigation are her own Google searches, Amazon reviews, and the other raw material of internet life—including the viral A.I. experiment that started it all. Searches illuminates Big Tech’s incursion into our lives, while proposing that by harnessing the collective imagination that taught us to communicate in the first place, we might invent a nobler, freer relationship with our machines and, ultimately, with one another.
When it was released to the public in November 2022, ChatGPT awakened the world to a secretive teaching A.I.-powered machines to write and talk like human beings. Its creators had a sweeping ambition—to get machines to communicate for us. But if this came to pass, would it be liberation or subjugation?
Vauhini Vara, an award-winning tech journalist and editor, had long been grappling with this question. In 2021, she used a predecessor of ChatGPT to write about her sister’s death, resulting in an essay that was both more moving and more disturbing than she could have imagined. It quickly went viral.
The experience, revealing both the appeal and the danger of corporate-owned language machines, forced Vara to interrogate how technology has changed how she uses language, from discovering online chat rooms as a preteen, to using social media as the Wall Street Journal�s first Facebook reporter, to testing early versions of ChatGPT—all while adding to the trove of human-created material that Big Tech exploits. Interspersed throughout this investigation are her own Google searches, Amazon reviews, and the other raw material of internet life—including the viral A.I. experiment that started it all. Searches illuminates Big Tech’s incursion into our lives, while proposing that by harnessing the collective imagination that taught us to communicate in the first place, we might invent a nobler, freer relationship with our machines and, ultimately, with one another.
352 pages, Hardcover
First published April 8, 2025
5,789 people want to read
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April 8, 2025
if this wins the National book award for nonfiction you all have to say that I called it here first on March 20th
Review from @jcgrenn_reads on Instagram:
SEARCHES
Vauhini Vara
Thank you @pantheonbooks � out 4/8
A smart, complicated, sweeping work studying how tech and AI function as surveillance capitalism in service of the market, but also a study in how artificial intelligence is relatable, interesting, and probably inescapable.
Searches stays curious about AI and tech while it criticizes Meta, Google, Apple, Amazon, OpenAI, X and the rest all in balanced and thoughtful essay. Vara puts herself in the ring as many of these guys were her contemporaries at the beginnings of the tech boom, and writes with grace and humor.
In using ChatGPT to give feedback on her manuscript as she writes (and publishing what it has to say) Vara actively implicates herself in humanity’s allowing of the double edged sword that is technology, specifically AI.
Her book comes into our hands and ears at such cost—the paper, the ink, the labor, (the water!) All the resources that create this book are ones we use daily too—Your reading of it comes at that expense as well. In a world where bookish people love to offer blanket critique and boycott of “AI� it seems many of us also have no problem using the Meta platform on our Apple products day in and day out.
The book is also interesting in another layer—it allows for AI to just make no sense. An unreliable narrator of sorts, the “feedback� sections often relay some nonsense among other parts that are honestly intensely profound. The only thing scary about that is that WE THE PPL will continue to believe what we read without regard to source as we always have.
In conclusion, It’s honestly refreshing to have such a “book person� be so on the pulse of all this, and to communicate it to us so clearly. Someone able to speak straight to the heart of so much we worry about with such beauty creativity and joy—that’s what we need in order to make sense and ensure equity as AI continues to creep into every facet of our lives, whether we want it or not.
A brilliant piece of journalism, an honest emotional memoir, and a lovely work of art all in one among other things—If Searches wins Vara a National book award longlisting and/or another Pulitzer nod, you heard it here first.
Review from @jcgrenn_reads on Instagram:
SEARCHES
Vauhini Vara
Thank you @pantheonbooks � out 4/8
A smart, complicated, sweeping work studying how tech and AI function as surveillance capitalism in service of the market, but also a study in how artificial intelligence is relatable, interesting, and probably inescapable.
Searches stays curious about AI and tech while it criticizes Meta, Google, Apple, Amazon, OpenAI, X and the rest all in balanced and thoughtful essay. Vara puts herself in the ring as many of these guys were her contemporaries at the beginnings of the tech boom, and writes with grace and humor.
In using ChatGPT to give feedback on her manuscript as she writes (and publishing what it has to say) Vara actively implicates herself in humanity’s allowing of the double edged sword that is technology, specifically AI.
Her book comes into our hands and ears at such cost—the paper, the ink, the labor, (the water!) All the resources that create this book are ones we use daily too—Your reading of it comes at that expense as well. In a world where bookish people love to offer blanket critique and boycott of “AI� it seems many of us also have no problem using the Meta platform on our Apple products day in and day out.
The book is also interesting in another layer—it allows for AI to just make no sense. An unreliable narrator of sorts, the “feedback� sections often relay some nonsense among other parts that are honestly intensely profound. The only thing scary about that is that WE THE PPL will continue to believe what we read without regard to source as we always have.
In conclusion, It’s honestly refreshing to have such a “book person� be so on the pulse of all this, and to communicate it to us so clearly. Someone able to speak straight to the heart of so much we worry about with such beauty creativity and joy—that’s what we need in order to make sense and ensure equity as AI continues to creep into every facet of our lives, whether we want it or not.
A brilliant piece of journalism, an honest emotional memoir, and a lovely work of art all in one among other things—If Searches wins Vara a National book award longlisting and/or another Pulitzer nod, you heard it here first.
April 20, 2025
Vauhini Vara (b. 1982) is a technology journalist and writer; she spent nearly 10 years at the Wall Street Journal covering tech companies. Her 2025 memoir, Searches, is one of the most creative, ambitious memoirs I've read in a long time. This memoir is composed of a series of largely chronological essays about the technology that's become pervasive from the '90s onwards, and how these technologies have fundamentally changed how we function in and even perceive the world. Vara focuses the lens of these stories on her own experiences, sharing intimate details about her technological life, such as her Google search history, her Adsense demographic data, her Amazon product reviews, and her chat transcripts with early versions of ChatGPT as feeds it chapters of her book and asks for feedback and reflection. One of the most powerful chapters in my opinion was chapter 10, Ghosts (adapted from ), in which she presents iterations of a very personal story she prompted ChatGPT to finish about her older sister, who died as a young adult after several years of battling Ewing sarcoma. Though the audiobook version of this chapter gets very repetitive as the same story is read repeatedly with Vara's voice narrating what she wrote and a voice actor, Anastasia Davidson, taking on what sounds like a synthetic voice narrating ChatGPT's contributions (a narrating arrangement followed throughout the book), it's a fascinating meta commentary on the creative process in our post-ChatGPT era.
There are a few other reasons precluding me from 5-starring this book that also stem from its adaptation from the print/Ebook version to an audiobook (which I think overall was very thoughtfully conceptualized). Listening to Vara's very long Google search history, Amazon product reviews, and presentation of survey results about what it's like to be alive as a woman today (chapter 16, which lasts for around 1 hr 20 min and is apparently collated from Mechanical Turk surveys Vara paid women to fill out and presented largely without commentary or analysis) were like nails on a chalkboard for me. I presume these are parts of the written book that people will generally skim rather than read with interest. I also lost interest in most of the long dialogues between Vara and ChatGPT, as honestly I read enough of what ChatGPT writes that I don't need to listen to it for hours longer. I unfortunately also found Chapter 8, I am Hungry to Talk, which is presented in the audiobook as Vara narrating an Spanish language essay in the background while Davidson translates in English in real time, jarring while listening (probably as I understand some Spanish and my brain was attempting to process both languages at once).
I do think Vara's analysis on on-point and important, and this memoir is worth a read and many reflections (though do as I say, not as I did, and pick up the physical book or Ebook, rather than the audiobook). And while you're at it, , and contemplate a) how Google got that impression of you (correctly or not) based on what you inputted, and b) what it's like to live in a society where we all have this vapor trail following us around digitally. I'll share mine from my primary browser (despite largely blocking ads with add-ons) and leave fellow GR users to contemplate what's true and what's false:
Relationships: Married
Household income: Moderately high income
Education: Bachelor's degree
Industry: Not enough info
Employer size: Large employer (250-10,000 employees)
Homeownership: Homeowners
Parenting: Not parents
(ChatGPT was not used to write, revise, or comment on any part of this review ;) )
Further reading: reflections on the digital age
by Kyle Chayka | my review
by Fei-Fei Li | my review
by Amy Webb
by Ethan Mollick | my review
by Madhumita Murgia | my review
My statistics:
Book 123 for 2025
Book 2049 cumulatively
There are a few other reasons precluding me from 5-starring this book that also stem from its adaptation from the print/Ebook version to an audiobook (which I think overall was very thoughtfully conceptualized). Listening to Vara's very long Google search history, Amazon product reviews, and presentation of survey results about what it's like to be alive as a woman today (chapter 16, which lasts for around 1 hr 20 min and is apparently collated from Mechanical Turk surveys Vara paid women to fill out and presented largely without commentary or analysis) were like nails on a chalkboard for me. I presume these are parts of the written book that people will generally skim rather than read with interest. I also lost interest in most of the long dialogues between Vara and ChatGPT, as honestly I read enough of what ChatGPT writes that I don't need to listen to it for hours longer. I unfortunately also found Chapter 8, I am Hungry to Talk, which is presented in the audiobook as Vara narrating an Spanish language essay in the background while Davidson translates in English in real time, jarring while listening (probably as I understand some Spanish and my brain was attempting to process both languages at once).
I do think Vara's analysis on on-point and important, and this memoir is worth a read and many reflections (though do as I say, not as I did, and pick up the physical book or Ebook, rather than the audiobook). And while you're at it, , and contemplate a) how Google got that impression of you (correctly or not) based on what you inputted, and b) what it's like to live in a society where we all have this vapor trail following us around digitally. I'll share mine from my primary browser (despite largely blocking ads with add-ons) and leave fellow GR users to contemplate what's true and what's false:
Relationships: Married
Household income: Moderately high income
Education: Bachelor's degree
Industry: Not enough info
Employer size: Large employer (250-10,000 employees)
Homeownership: Homeowners
Parenting: Not parents
(ChatGPT was not used to write, revise, or comment on any part of this review ;) )
Further reading: reflections on the digital age
by Kyle Chayka | my review
by Fei-Fei Li | my review
by Amy Webb
by Ethan Mollick | my review
by Madhumita Murgia | my review
My statistics:
Book 123 for 2025
Book 2049 cumulatively
March 16, 2025
This book does what it’s trying to do well and creatively. Though opposed to AI, I thought the interspersing of AI-generated feedback between chapters was innovative. It showed the AI’s storytelling is inferior to Vara’s lived experience. A super interesting read but one I worry will lose relevance as more generative models come into being.
Thank you for NetGalley and Pantheon for the ARC.
Thank you for NetGalley and Pantheon for the ARC.
April 2, 2025
Overall I enjoyed this book. I think the author takes an introspective look on how digital technologies have impacted her life and personal identity while exploring the ways she interacts with the world. The reflection takes place from 2019-2024 and Vara provides her musings on the development of various modern technologies, namely Google, Meta, and Open AI. She also tussles with what role she should play as the previously named corporations seek to use their platforms to connect and possibly dominate the entire world. Will she be a conscious consumer, critic, or conspirator? There is a memoir like quality to the book as she spends a considerable amount of time interrogating the contributions she is presently making and reflecting on the decisions she has made in the past as she came of age online.
I think my least favorite part of the book were the conversations with ChatGPT. There are so many AI generated articles and think pieces being passed around online that it detracted from the conversation I felt like I was having with her in my position a reader. It felt like I was walking in on a conversation that I wasn't invited to. I think I have had my fill of ChatGPT's sterile and empty writing style, but to Vara's credit she discusses this at length in a chapter.
Overall a solid book that I enjoyed and feels in conversations with Race After Technology by Ruha Benjamin and Filterworld by Kyle Chayka.
I think my least favorite part of the book were the conversations with ChatGPT. There are so many AI generated articles and think pieces being passed around online that it detracted from the conversation I felt like I was having with her in my position a reader. It felt like I was walking in on a conversation that I wasn't invited to. I think I have had my fill of ChatGPT's sterile and empty writing style, but to Vara's credit she discusses this at length in a chapter.
Overall a solid book that I enjoyed and feels in conversations with Race After Technology by Ruha Benjamin and Filterworld by Kyle Chayka.
March 25, 2025
Thanks to NetGalley and Pantheon for this advance readers copy, in exchange for an honest review. Searches is the author’s meditation on her lived experience and observations about the rise of artificial intelligence, with commentary starting at even the rise of the internet and its availability for widespread use.
I appreciated the author’s vulnerability and personal commentary throughout the book; I thought that the different structure she used throughout was certainly unique although at times, a little much to keep up with. I did particularly appreciate the interactions with AI critiquing the book, as I thought this was pretty clever and interesting to think about, given her points in this book. I don’t know if I was necessarily the best audience for this, as I struggled to maintain interest throughout. However, I would definitely recommend this book to anyone interested in this advance of AI and its personal impacts on the human experience.
I appreciated the author’s vulnerability and personal commentary throughout the book; I thought that the different structure she used throughout was certainly unique although at times, a little much to keep up with. I did particularly appreciate the interactions with AI critiquing the book, as I thought this was pretty clever and interesting to think about, given her points in this book. I don’t know if I was necessarily the best audience for this, as I struggled to maintain interest throughout. However, I would definitely recommend this book to anyone interested in this advance of AI and its personal impacts on the human experience.
April 15, 2025
i found this book interesting though some elements are much stronger than others.
overall, though, it gives interesting context to the time and place we find ourselves with technology, ai, the rise of the tech billionaires, and the power they wield.
overall, though, it gives interesting context to the time and place we find ourselves with technology, ai, the rise of the tech billionaires, and the power they wield.
April 22, 2025
Loved this inventive and reflective memoir by a fellow geriatric millennial.
February 19, 2025
Vara is a former journalist whose beats covered the tech industry. She also wrote a viral essay, "Ghosts", in which she tried to write about her older sister, who died of cancer, with the help of an early version of ChatGPT. In that piece, also included here, she begins writing several different essays about her grief, having AI finish them. With each version, more and more of the AI text is replaced with her own words. The piece was also adapted for a This American Life episode. I read both Vara's short story collection and the essay "Ghosts", so was intrigued to see an entire essay collection interrogating our relationship with modern technology (Facebook, Amazon, Twitter, Google, AI, etc.)
Through various chapters, Vara weaves in personal history along with the history of a various technology, while also incorporating her own relationship with each. So we have the juxtaposition of how the city of Seattle, where she lived as a teen, is shaped by the rise of various tech companies like Microsoft and Amazon, while also getting background on how each of those technologies became so ubiquitous in our lives. An essay on AI and creativity includes an imaginary pitch that she has varous AI programs provide the art for, which only provides evidence for some of the downsides of AI art creation, like the biases and stereotypes baked in. Interspersed with each essay, we get various documents from Vara's own uses of each technology: her Amazon order history, her Google search history, the interests Twitter has assigned to her (in a chapter called "Elon Musk, Empire", a litte too on-the-nose right now, shudder). She also feeds each of her essays into ChatGPT and has it summarize and respond to each essay. These ChatGPT responses are sometimes innaccurate and usually excessively optimistic about each technology (Acknowledge positive contributions! is one of Chat's frequent responses). While interesting, these sections often felt a little repetitive.
Vara shares how much we are potentially giving up, personally and societally, by our dependence on such technologies (and particularly the monopolistic companies and individuals behind them) and how we sacrifice privacy, autonomy, and discovery for convenience and progress. But she does so while also sharing how she still continues to use each, despite knowing more than most about the potential drawbacks.
Through various chapters, Vara weaves in personal history along with the history of a various technology, while also incorporating her own relationship with each. So we have the juxtaposition of how the city of Seattle, where she lived as a teen, is shaped by the rise of various tech companies like Microsoft and Amazon, while also getting background on how each of those technologies became so ubiquitous in our lives. An essay on AI and creativity includes an imaginary pitch that she has varous AI programs provide the art for, which only provides evidence for some of the downsides of AI art creation, like the biases and stereotypes baked in. Interspersed with each essay, we get various documents from Vara's own uses of each technology: her Amazon order history, her Google search history, the interests Twitter has assigned to her (in a chapter called "Elon Musk, Empire", a litte too on-the-nose right now, shudder). She also feeds each of her essays into ChatGPT and has it summarize and respond to each essay. These ChatGPT responses are sometimes innaccurate and usually excessively optimistic about each technology (Acknowledge positive contributions! is one of Chat's frequent responses). While interesting, these sections often felt a little repetitive.
Vara shares how much we are potentially giving up, personally and societally, by our dependence on such technologies (and particularly the monopolistic companies and individuals behind them) and how we sacrifice privacy, autonomy, and discovery for convenience and progress. But she does so while also sharing how she still continues to use each, despite knowing more than most about the potential drawbacks.
April 10, 2025
Thanks to NetGalley and Pantheon for the ARC of this title.
This is a 3.5 rounded up to 4. When the essays in this book nail it, they nail. it. Moving, thoughtful, doing great work in thinking about what the current round of LLM can do and is useful for.
I'm fine with the overall bridging sections with a Chat GPT (or ChatGPT-alike) reviews the last few chapters as a framing mechanism, but so many of the essays feel like good conceptual _ideas_ for essays set up in the chapter immediately preceding them that, once executed, are nowhere near as fun to engage with as a reader vs. as a thought experiment.
"I decided if I was going to use Amazon less, I'd need to write a review for any product I purchased."
Cool.
[an essay consisting of the product reviews]
Meh.
An essay engaging with AI image generation's biases around women and people of color? Great!
A story that uses AI image generation to showcase this in the form of a fictional investor pitch that shows how those tools illustrate some claims vs. others when race/gender in included in the prompt?
interesting as a thought experiment as a potential illustration, deeply frustrating to read, especially thinking about the resources needed to generate (and possible re-generate) the images.
The essays that were the clear driver for this book shine, I just wish the rest wasn't so reliant on engaging with LLMs to do the work.
This is a 3.5 rounded up to 4. When the essays in this book nail it, they nail. it. Moving, thoughtful, doing great work in thinking about what the current round of LLM can do and is useful for.
I'm fine with the overall bridging sections with a Chat GPT (or ChatGPT-alike) reviews the last few chapters as a framing mechanism, but so many of the essays feel like good conceptual _ideas_ for essays set up in the chapter immediately preceding them that, once executed, are nowhere near as fun to engage with as a reader vs. as a thought experiment.
"I decided if I was going to use Amazon less, I'd need to write a review for any product I purchased."
Cool.
[an essay consisting of the product reviews]
Meh.
An essay engaging with AI image generation's biases around women and people of color? Great!
A story that uses AI image generation to showcase this in the form of a fictional investor pitch that shows how those tools illustrate some claims vs. others when race/gender in included in the prompt?
interesting as a thought experiment as a potential illustration, deeply frustrating to read, especially thinking about the resources needed to generate (and possible re-generate) the images.
The essays that were the clear driver for this book shine, I just wish the rest wasn't so reliant on engaging with LLMs to do the work.
Want to read
February 9, 2025read a bit of the latter (chatgpt-focused) sections and i'm so torn. i want this to be big and for people to get more reasonable (as i think vara is) about chatgpt and its use as an art aid, but i am also so fucking pissed off at how hardliners forget their hardline stance and don't even notice themselves becoming more reasonable, let alone apologizing for deriding any and all uses of chatgpt/generative ai at large for/in art before they saw it used by a ~high literary writer~. oh well i suppose i shall get less skrunkly once i read the whole book... we hope!... tho i am not cheered to see it is mostly NOT about the thing i am most interested in x_X.
April 6, 2025
Wow! This is an immensely ambitious book, one that’ll likely find its way onto awards lists later this year. A deeply personal and introspective journey through a life interwined with tech, and a masterclass in the blurry ethics of AI and artistry.
Read it.
Read it.
April 18, 2025
kinda mind-blowing
April 19, 2025
Fascinating and provocative. Full disclosure: I've known the author since our older sisters were about to start their freshman year at Duke in 1998. I remember and miss Krishna, so this book by Vauhini was deeply affecting on a personal level. The essays "Ghosts" and "Record the World" were standouts.
April 18, 2025
Thought this started with great promise, and there were some good observations and a few nice lines all the way throughout. But I found the ChatGPT literary device far outstayed its welcome, becoming a tedious gimmick past a certain point, and I really didn't care for the crowd-sourcing approach in the final section.
March 17, 2025
Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for providing me with an ARC of Searches! Honestly, by the time I got to the end, I had a lot of conflicting opinions about the text. Ultimately, in my opinion, I felt that it was trying to be too many things at once. Part critical analysis, part memoir, part abstract theorizing and rumination. Certain aspects of it worked for me, while others did not. I particularly did not enjoy the author’s handwringing about her use of Amazon and generative AI. The moral grandstanding that we all have to deal with these days, whether from politicians or from friends and family, is already exhausting, and having to read an entire chapter’s worth of Amazon reviews doesn’t make me gain any sympathy for the author. My own qualms aside, though, the use of AI as a source of external commentary on the text of the novel was something I found interesting. The juxtaposition of the author’s writing—often complex and interwoven with thought and emotion in a way AI can hardly replicate, in my opinion—and the AI’s formulaic, repetitive responses was stark, and gave me a lot of food for thought on the ways in which we have been letting AI permeate our lives. I also liked Vara’s interrogation and challenging of ChatGPT throughout the text, particularly as it pertained to tone, portrayals of figures like Sam Altman, and strategies to ingratiate itself with the user. While not a particularly groundbreaking reflection on AI and the role of technology in our lives, Searches was overall an interesting read.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
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April 7, 2025“Searches� is unlike anything I’ve read before: a genre-defying mix of memoir, investigative reporting, and anthropology. Vauhini Vara, whose Pulitzer-nominated novel “The Immortal King Rao� explored a dystopian world ruled by a tech corporation, has long been fascinated by the intersection of power, technology, and humanity. Her latest work is a chronology of the tech industry, from AOL to Generative AI, all while weaving in a deeply personal story of grief. Where most AI discourse is either doomsday panic or blind optimism, Vara offers a rare balm: clarity. This book neither fears nor worships technology—it simply asks readers to pay attention.
Her writing is what one would expect from a master journalist turned award-winning novelist: sharp, meticulously researched, wry, and deeply perceptive. She distills nuance from complex systems; how Amazon shapes not just what we buy, but what gets produced. Or how popular platforms mirror innate sources of power: Amazon for economic capital, Google for cultural capital, Facebook for social capital. She presents these insights without prescription, inviting us to reflect rather than react against the system without forethought.
Her personal anecdotes are admirably candid: a chapter on how Google evolved from a founding motto of “don’t be evil,� and the ways it has satisfied or betrayed this belief, followed by pages of her own unfiltered Google searches, even the embarrassing ones. She traces the gentrification of her hometown, Seattle, punctuated by the forces shaping her own home: her parents tumultuous marriage and a sister battling cancer. After a tense ethical debate with a friend, she commits to justify her Amazon purchases with lengthy reviews, even sharing these ramblings in a chapter that brilliantly blends narrative device with a subtle critique of consumerism. ChatGPT itself interrupts the book with feedback, turning the act of writing into a conversation between human and machine. These aren’t gimmicks, though they are entertaining; they are choices to illustrate how technology is intertwined with our existence.
Vara doesn’t deny AI’s risks, but she resists oversimplifications. She includes in secondary academic research, and first-person interviews, including one with Sam Altman back when OpenAI was a small nonprofit built by optimistic engineers, which deepen her analysis of technology and ethics.
As someone who grew up in Silicon Valley—where Apple was founded, where my schools received donated MacBooks, where I watched the first iPhone debut—I found myself reckoning with my own place in this history. I felt awe at the outsized influence a small, privileged bubble, one I was proximally a part of, has had in shaping the world; nostalgia, remembering my illicit exploration of an AOL chat room or the first Instagram photo I ever posted—a hazily filtered shot of my friend eating a cookie, captioned extremely literally—before the platform morphed into influencers, engagement metrics, and curated realities.
And then, most unexpectedly, moments that knocked the wind out of me. The rawness of grief—a force that, despite technology’s relentless march forward, remains immutable and inescapable. Amid the loud sea of AI opinions online, Vara’s voice challenges you to consider what, in this next age of artificial intelligence, demands our protection and defines humanity.
Her writing is what one would expect from a master journalist turned award-winning novelist: sharp, meticulously researched, wry, and deeply perceptive. She distills nuance from complex systems; how Amazon shapes not just what we buy, but what gets produced. Or how popular platforms mirror innate sources of power: Amazon for economic capital, Google for cultural capital, Facebook for social capital. She presents these insights without prescription, inviting us to reflect rather than react against the system without forethought.
Her personal anecdotes are admirably candid: a chapter on how Google evolved from a founding motto of “don’t be evil,� and the ways it has satisfied or betrayed this belief, followed by pages of her own unfiltered Google searches, even the embarrassing ones. She traces the gentrification of her hometown, Seattle, punctuated by the forces shaping her own home: her parents tumultuous marriage and a sister battling cancer. After a tense ethical debate with a friend, she commits to justify her Amazon purchases with lengthy reviews, even sharing these ramblings in a chapter that brilliantly blends narrative device with a subtle critique of consumerism. ChatGPT itself interrupts the book with feedback, turning the act of writing into a conversation between human and machine. These aren’t gimmicks, though they are entertaining; they are choices to illustrate how technology is intertwined with our existence.
Vara doesn’t deny AI’s risks, but she resists oversimplifications. She includes in secondary academic research, and first-person interviews, including one with Sam Altman back when OpenAI was a small nonprofit built by optimistic engineers, which deepen her analysis of technology and ethics.
As someone who grew up in Silicon Valley—where Apple was founded, where my schools received donated MacBooks, where I watched the first iPhone debut—I found myself reckoning with my own place in this history. I felt awe at the outsized influence a small, privileged bubble, one I was proximally a part of, has had in shaping the world; nostalgia, remembering my illicit exploration of an AOL chat room or the first Instagram photo I ever posted—a hazily filtered shot of my friend eating a cookie, captioned extremely literally—before the platform morphed into influencers, engagement metrics, and curated realities.
And then, most unexpectedly, moments that knocked the wind out of me. The rawness of grief—a force that, despite technology’s relentless march forward, remains immutable and inescapable. Amid the loud sea of AI opinions online, Vara’s voice challenges you to consider what, in this next age of artificial intelligence, demands our protection and defines humanity.
January 9, 2025
This deeply personal consideration of the impact of the digital age and Artificial Intelligence on the author’s life is candid and surprising, incorporating unique narratives. A chapter on the author’s Goggle searches and dialogues with ChatGPT about her manuscript are included, and AI created ‘photographs�, and shudderingly bad AI text.
I can see us turning reflexively to AI assistants for lots of aspects of daily life. We can’t stop ourselves, any more than we were able to in the past.� from Searches by Vauhini Vara
Tech journalist Vara admits she can’t resist Digital Age technology, even knowing the drawbacks.
If our social media presence reflects our offline identities only the way that a fun-house mirror does, who is it, exactly, that advertisers are reaching, when social media companies promise to target ads to us based on that presence? from Searches by Vauhini Vara
I get frustrated by the stupidity I encounter daily, such as the Facebook ads on my Literate Quilter page on which I daily get a dozen ads for runners, especially Black runners, when I have two bad knees. Or how Goggle Photos identifies relatives incorrectly, often way off base, so I am continuingly correcting them.
I search online to fact check when writing, or making sure I am using the correct word. But would I used ChatGPT to write on days I am stymied about what to say? Like, for this review on a book so obviously over-my-head? Would I purchase an AI written novel? I mean, Jane Austen only wrote so many and if I am longing to read one more, would I take a chance on such a book?
I can’t imagine it. My husband watches a lot of YouTube educational videos because he has pledged to overcome his addiction to the news and I can immediately tell which have real people narrating. When the voice talks about “fts� instead of “feet� you know something is off.
Today I read in the newspaper that the Tesla Cybertruck bomber used ChatGPT to plan the blast. Technology, once in the world, is hard to control.
Vara questions “is it possible to invent a technology of communication ourselves that can overcome what separates and hierarchizes us? Or would any technology only reinscribe the separations and hierarchies that already exist? In the end, perhaps it is better to do what is more difficult: to keep trying to improve our communication using the free tool we already have, which is language. Perhaps what makes life easier is not always better.�
A fascinating book on complex issues.
Thanks to the publisher for a free book.
I can see us turning reflexively to AI assistants for lots of aspects of daily life. We can’t stop ourselves, any more than we were able to in the past.� from Searches by Vauhini Vara
Tech journalist Vara admits she can’t resist Digital Age technology, even knowing the drawbacks.
If our social media presence reflects our offline identities only the way that a fun-house mirror does, who is it, exactly, that advertisers are reaching, when social media companies promise to target ads to us based on that presence? from Searches by Vauhini Vara
I get frustrated by the stupidity I encounter daily, such as the Facebook ads on my Literate Quilter page on which I daily get a dozen ads for runners, especially Black runners, when I have two bad knees. Or how Goggle Photos identifies relatives incorrectly, often way off base, so I am continuingly correcting them.
I search online to fact check when writing, or making sure I am using the correct word. But would I used ChatGPT to write on days I am stymied about what to say? Like, for this review on a book so obviously over-my-head? Would I purchase an AI written novel? I mean, Jane Austen only wrote so many and if I am longing to read one more, would I take a chance on such a book?
I can’t imagine it. My husband watches a lot of YouTube educational videos because he has pledged to overcome his addiction to the news and I can immediately tell which have real people narrating. When the voice talks about “fts� instead of “feet� you know something is off.
Today I read in the newspaper that the Tesla Cybertruck bomber used ChatGPT to plan the blast. Technology, once in the world, is hard to control.
Vara questions “is it possible to invent a technology of communication ourselves that can overcome what separates and hierarchizes us? Or would any technology only reinscribe the separations and hierarchies that already exist? In the end, perhaps it is better to do what is more difficult: to keep trying to improve our communication using the free tool we already have, which is language. Perhaps what makes life easier is not always better.�
A fascinating book on complex issues.
Thanks to the publisher for a free book.
March 29, 2025
Most Seattlites, whether or not they work in Big Tech, have a general idea of how tech monoliths like Amazon, Microsoft, etc have transformed the city in the past few decades. Searches provide in-depth background, critical analysis and personal experience on the impact of modern tech advances, as author and tech journalist Vauhini Vara illustrates her experience growing up during the tech boom. The book starts with reminding us that these companies used to be lauded for their progressive values, innovative ideas, and even philanthropy (i.e., Mackenzie Scott). I also didn’t know about Paul Allen (Microsoft co-founder) saving the Seahawks from having to relocate to LA, so that was a neat piece of local history.
I enjoyed the conversational writing style, and the book dives deeply into the origins of the internet and social media to the situation we have today, leaning into the motives of key players like Zuckerberg, Musk, Pichai, Altman, etc. Vara actually starts off describing her first experiences with chat rooms and AOL and moves seamlessly into investigative reporting on the lawsuits and incursions wrought by social media and tech giants, even divulging little known facts, like Zuckerberg naming his kids after Roman emperors, which is simultaneously appalling and typical at the same time.
Each chapter alternates between Vara’s voice and some feature of tech. For instance, when Vara writes about Google, the next chapter lists a bunch of Google searches. When she writes about Amazon and how her friend abstains from shopping on Amazon, the next chapter is filled with her Amazon reviews. Each chapter is also fed into ChatGPT to form a mini summary/analysis at the end. The AI-based chapters were kind of a chore to read, a stark contrast to the sheer brilliance and insight of the author’s original writing. I do appreciate the author’s creativity and experimental take on this stylistic choice; however, it would’ve been more effective if there were less content produced by ChatGPT, maybe or 2 chapters would’ve sufficed
Special thanks to Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor and NetGalley for providing an eARC in exchange for an honest, independent review.
I enjoyed the conversational writing style, and the book dives deeply into the origins of the internet and social media to the situation we have today, leaning into the motives of key players like Zuckerberg, Musk, Pichai, Altman, etc. Vara actually starts off describing her first experiences with chat rooms and AOL and moves seamlessly into investigative reporting on the lawsuits and incursions wrought by social media and tech giants, even divulging little known facts, like Zuckerberg naming his kids after Roman emperors, which is simultaneously appalling and typical at the same time.
Each chapter alternates between Vara’s voice and some feature of tech. For instance, when Vara writes about Google, the next chapter lists a bunch of Google searches. When she writes about Amazon and how her friend abstains from shopping on Amazon, the next chapter is filled with her Amazon reviews. Each chapter is also fed into ChatGPT to form a mini summary/analysis at the end. The AI-based chapters were kind of a chore to read, a stark contrast to the sheer brilliance and insight of the author’s original writing. I do appreciate the author’s creativity and experimental take on this stylistic choice; however, it would’ve been more effective if there were less content produced by ChatGPT, maybe or 2 chapters would’ve sufficed
Special thanks to Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor and NetGalley for providing an eARC in exchange for an honest, independent review.
March 28, 2025
An interesting exploration of technologies and capitalism in our lives both positively and negatively. I personally do not use AI generative applications like Chat GPT but found it interesting to see how these applications built by scrubbing the works of others would interpret works written about them and their founders. I could relate to Vara in this pull between knowing all the things that entities like Meta, Amazon, and Google due to surveil us and yet not being able to stop using their services due to the convenience and reliance we’ve developed with them. Ultimately I found the chapter Ghosts to be the most illuminating surrounding the limitations of AI. It can try to replicate the way humans talk and sound but it ultimately will always add in information that isn’t true and feels unauthentic to the piece. This will be a book that I think about often as I continue to explore my own use with technology in our capitalistic society.
December 24, 2024
An exceptional and experimental book that uses AI tools to compose a sometimes slow but more frequently brilliant narrative about what it’s like to live in the Age of AI as a writer. A memoir and a meditation on technology, Vara stumbles a couple of times with concepts that don’t take off (the Spanish chapter), but her detailed conversations with ChatGPT, her observations about her own life in technology, and her discussion of her sister’s tragic passing resonates strongly. I haven’t read the previous collection she references frequently, Ghosts, so I’m not sure if a lot of this ground was covered there, but Searches is an important book that helps us parse being a creative person at a time when creative work is being reimagined with AI technologies. Kudos to her for the Processes section, which will probably find its way into more books in the days ahead.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 20, 2025
Thanks to Pantheon and Netgalley for this advanced copy!
Searches is a meditation on technology, our sense of self, what we put out into this world, and what we are getting back from it. I sometimes struggle with books that have unique and often changing structures, but Searches pulled me in and I appreciated how each chapter wasn't forced to conform to a style, but was set up to best illustrate the point the author was making. This type of style change can feel gimmicky in the wrong hands, but Vara uses it well and it adds to the reading experience, as well as the theme. On top of that, I don't know that I needed to read another book or article about tech and our lives, but by centering much of this book around Vara's life, and the loss of her sister, Vara humanizes this conversation in a way so few do.
Searches is a meditation on technology, our sense of self, what we put out into this world, and what we are getting back from it. I sometimes struggle with books that have unique and often changing structures, but Searches pulled me in and I appreciated how each chapter wasn't forced to conform to a style, but was set up to best illustrate the point the author was making. This type of style change can feel gimmicky in the wrong hands, but Vara uses it well and it adds to the reading experience, as well as the theme. On top of that, I don't know that I needed to read another book or article about tech and our lives, but by centering much of this book around Vara's life, and the loss of her sister, Vara humanizes this conversation in a way so few do.
April 25, 2025
A critique of technology presented in a unique way, distinct from other works in the genre.
Vara navigates from the dawn of internet culture in the 1990s to our hyper-connected present, illustrating how technology has subtly and profoundly altered our lives, thoughts, and relationships. Drawing from her personal digital artifacts, such as Google search history, Amazon reviews, Adsense data, and even ChatGPT conversations, she goes into the interplay between technology, creativity, and human connection.
A particularly intriguing chapter in my opinion focuses on Google Translate, where language serves as both barrier and bridge. It transcends linguistic accuracy, serving as a metaphor for how technology mediates communication, revealing its limitations.
Vara navigates from the dawn of internet culture in the 1990s to our hyper-connected present, illustrating how technology has subtly and profoundly altered our lives, thoughts, and relationships. Drawing from her personal digital artifacts, such as Google search history, Amazon reviews, Adsense data, and even ChatGPT conversations, she goes into the interplay between technology, creativity, and human connection.
A particularly intriguing chapter in my opinion focuses on Google Translate, where language serves as both barrier and bridge. It transcends linguistic accuracy, serving as a metaphor for how technology mediates communication, revealing its limitations.
March 10, 2025
4.5 ⭐️
When I initially read the description, I thought this was going to be hyper fixated on open AI and ChatGPT. But I enjoyed reading both her perspective and the AI from her chapters. Some parts of the reading are hard to get through and a little dull, but I feel as if that was her point. I do think that this is an important conversation to have because she points out a lot of originality and personal touches that are lost through the advancement of AI.
Overall, I really enjoyed reading this book. I was already interested in topics like this, but I really appreciate the perspective of this author.
Thank you NetGalley for sending me this E-ARC for review!!
When I initially read the description, I thought this was going to be hyper fixated on open AI and ChatGPT. But I enjoyed reading both her perspective and the AI from her chapters. Some parts of the reading are hard to get through and a little dull, but I feel as if that was her point. I do think that this is an important conversation to have because she points out a lot of originality and personal touches that are lost through the advancement of AI.
Overall, I really enjoyed reading this book. I was already interested in topics like this, but I really appreciate the perspective of this author.
Thank you NetGalley for sending me this E-ARC for review!!
April 21, 2025
This book is endlessly creative and thought provoking - I loved it! Vara pairs memoir-style essays that explore the role of technology in her life (as a tech journalist and a consumer) with experimental essays that leverage the technology she’s discussing in unexpected ways. For example, in an incredible testament to her skill as a writer, she moved from reflections on her first encounter with Google in college to an experiment where she created a poetic story of the last decade of her life using only a string of her Google searches results. Just wow. This book will stay with you for a long time.
April 22, 2025
I really wanted to love this book. Reading the synopsis it seemed like something very relevant to our world today, how does the internet impact our sense of self? Instead I received a half AI generated essay collection with a few essays worth reading mixed in. A few of the chapters were extremely well written and show that Vara can write amazing pieces! Unfortunately the other chapters either read as a Silicon Valley history lesson or are just a straight up copy-paste text interaction with ChatGPT.
April 5, 2025
Deeply personal, lyrical and thought-provoking essays from one of the most original voices on new technologies. She skilfully blends recollections from the early days of the Internet with the most pressing questions about our privacy and identity. Fresh and surprising.
Thanks to the publisher, Pantheon, and NetGalley for an advanced copy of this book.
Thanks to the publisher, Pantheon, and NetGalley for an advanced copy of this book.
April 10, 2025
There's a genre of book that I, glibly, call "the internet is weird, huh?" I've had to read a lot of books in this genre, and SEARCHES is the best entry I've ever read—so good, in fact, that it breaks the genre, transcends it. A true five-star book.
April 14, 2025
I could relate to Vara in this pull between knowing all the things that entities like Meta, Amazon, and Google due to surveil us and yet not being able to stop using their services due to the convenience and reliance we’ve developed with them. Highly recommend.
April 19, 2025
I enjoyed the reflections on the relationship between humans and developing AI. I probably would have enjoyed this book more in print because then I could scan the lists of questions and searches instead of listening to the lengthy reading of them.
December 11, 2024
Whoa this book is so good omg
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