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Description
From the author of The Immortal King Rao, finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, a personal exploration of how technology companies have both fulfilled and exploited the human desire for understanding and connection
A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK: The New York Times, Esquire, Harper’s Bazaar, Foreign Policy, Bustle, Alta, Ms. Magazine, Cultured, Denizen, The Millions, Lit Hub, Book Riot, and Electric Literature
When it was released to the public in November 2022, ChatGPT awakened the world to a secretive project: teaching AI-powered machines to write. Its creators had a sweeping ambition—to build machines that could not only communicate, but could do all kinds of other activities, better than humans ever could. But was this goal actually achievable? And if reached, would it lead to our liberation or our subjugation?
Vauhini Vara, an award-winning tech journalist and editor, had long been grappling with these questions. In 2021, she asked 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 power and the danger of corporate-owned technologies, forced Vara to interrogate how these technologies have influenced her understanding of her self and the world around her, from discovering online chat rooms as a preteen, to using social media as the Wall Street Journal’s first Facebook reporter, to asking ChatGPT for writing advice—while compelling her to add to the trove of human-created material exploited for corporations’ financial gain. Interspersed throughout this investigation are her own Google searches, Amazon reviews, and the other raw material of internet life—including the viral AI experiment that started it all. Searches illuminates how technological capitalism is both shaping and exploiting human existence, while proposing that by harnessing the collective creativity that makes humans unique, we might imagine a freer, more empowered relationship with our machines and, ultimately, with one another.
A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK: The New York Times, Esquire, Harper’s Bazaar, Foreign Policy, Bustle, Alta, Ms. Magazine, Cultured, Denizen, The Millions, Lit Hub, Book Riot, and Electric Literature
When it was released to the public in November 2022, ChatGPT awakened the world to a secretive project: teaching AI-powered machines to write. Its creators had a sweeping ambition—to build machines that could not only communicate, but could do all kinds of other activities, better than humans ever could. But was this goal actually achievable? And if reached, would it lead to our liberation or our subjugation?
Vauhini Vara, an award-winning tech journalist and editor, had long been grappling with these questions. In 2021, she asked 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 power and the danger of corporate-owned technologies, forced Vara to interrogate how these technologies have influenced her understanding of her self and the world around her, from discovering online chat rooms as a preteen, to using social media as the Wall Street Journal’s first Facebook reporter, to asking ChatGPT for writing advice—while compelling her to add to the trove of human-created material exploited for corporations’ financial gain. Interspersed throughout this investigation are her own Google searches, Amazon reviews, and the other raw material of internet life—including the viral AI experiment that started it all. Searches illuminates how technological capitalism is both shaping and exploiting human existence, while proposing that by harnessing the collective creativity that makes humans unique, we might imagine a freer, more empowered relationship with our machines and, ultimately, with one another.
Product Details
| Publisher | Pantheon |
| Publish Date | April 08, 2025 |
| Pages | 352 |
| Language | English |
| Type |  Hardback |
| EAN/UPC | 9780593701522 |
| Dimensions | 9.5 X 6.4 X 1.2 inches | 1.1 pounds |
About the Author
Vauhini Vara has been a reporter and editor for The Atlantic, The New Yorker, and the New York Times Magazine, and is the prize-winning author of The Immortal King Rao and This is Salvaged. She lives in Fort Collins, Colorado.
Reviews
“Vara journeys through the evolution of the internet, ethical quandaries surrounding AI, and her own life with her characteristically piercing, yet unadorned prose. . . . at once genre-defying and gripping.”—The Washington Post
“A complicated and many-sided book. . . . Searches has many things to recommend it. Vara has a congenial style and, her nose to the zeitgeist, good stories to tell.”—Dwight Garner, The New York Times
“Vara hasn’t lost her journalist edge, as she shows throughout this book . . . Searches is as discomfiting as it is entertaining, with Vara exercising playful technique as a writer while also laying down dire warnings about a tech-dominated future. It’s also a clear reminder that, at least for now, nothing can make language sing like a gifted human mind.”—Harper’s Magazine
“In a growing lineage of books critiquing the power that tech titans wield over our physical world, Searches stands out for emphasizing how they’ve also shaped our private psychological terrain. Vara treats her own life as a vehicle to recount the disquieting history of the internet—or perhaps the other way around. . . . This seamless blend of personal narrative and systemic critique parallels Vara’s subject: technology that has made it feel impossible to compose a self and a society without it.”—The Atlantic
“Vara is an appealing narrator—smart, funny, honest.” —The New Yorker
“Vara consistently applies her own deliberate curiosity to the implications of innovation. Crucially, she brings a gimlet eye, sharpened by her journalism background, to the enthusiastic claims of technology evangelists. . . . In the face of all the technology, Searches’ least mediated observations remain its most haunting.”—Alta
“[Vara] is equipped to take on these issues to an almost uncanny degree. . . . Searches is as discomfiting as it is entertaining, with Vara exercising playful technique as a writer while also laying down dire warnings about a tech-dominated future. It’s also a clear reminder that, at least for now, nothing can make language sing like a gifted human mind.” —San Francisco Chronicle
“A thought-provoking investigation into personal history, creativity, and technology, elements that make us all.”—Alta
“Vara urges readers to think about the digital landscape in new and challenging ways.” —Bustle
“Thought-provoking, accessible and compelling. . . . Will have you questioning what you thought you knew about technology in the 21st century.”—Ms. Magazine
“A masterful memoir written with the precision of a journalist and skills of a creative writer—both of which Vara is—and framed as a conversation with ChatGPT, Searches . . . takes us on an astonishing journey that shocks us from time to time with how little we know about tech, how much tech knows about us, and how much more there is for all of us to know and learn.”—PEN, “The PEN Ten”
“Timely and necessary. . . . Ultimately, this book asks us to engage in the big questions and to ask what makes us human and if we are letting machines and capitalism engulf our humanity.”—International Examiner
“[Vara] invites us to pause and reflect on the agency we still possess in these the late stages of global capitalism, and to imagine alternative, hopeful futures. . . . While her background as a top-tier tech journalist gives the book an air of authority, Vara’s skills as a novelist (The Immortal King Rao, a 2023 Pulitzer finalist) are what bring Searches to life.”—Rocky Mountain Reader
“Provocative. . . . Vara examines the allure and risks of AI-powered communication — questioning whether these tools will liberate us or further exploit our voices.”—Denizen
“Readers will be profoundly moved by this remarkable meditation.”—Publishers Weekly, starred review
“Tragic, funny, and relatable[, Searches] is by turns absurd and insightful, engaging with the ethics of algorithms, surveillance, and privacy in a meaningful way. . . . A must read.”—Library Journal, starred review
“Vara’s essays are beautifully written and profoundly researched, but what sets them apart is their profound vulnerability. Her use of experimental forms . . . pushes the limits of the genre without ever compromising her circumspective, confessional approach. An original essay collection about loss, technology, morality, and identity.”—Kirkus, starred review
“Vara humanizes the influence of technology in highly personal terms [and] projects what the future holds as tech oligarchs gain political influence. . . . Provocative, challenging, and concerning, Vara’s clever, eye-opening approach brings home the often uneasy confluence of individual desire, social benefits, and corporate ambition.” —Booklist, starred review
“A book of essays in the original sense, which is to say that it is a book of experiments, of interrogations: of the internet, of form, of possibilities, of ourselves.”—LitHub, “Most Anticipated Books of 2025”
"Searches is that rare thing: a genuinely thrilling book that breaks open existing forms and structures to offer something entirely new. Vara brings the rigor of a reporter and the exhilarating impulses of an artist into this extraordinary, sui generis book: with wit, insight, tenderness, humility, and clear-eyed candor, she explores the wild frontiers of what our lives have already become. The stakes are high. The ride is terrifying and illuminating at once. This book will leave you changed and stay with you for good."—Leslie Jamison, author of Splinters: Another Kind of Love Story
"I cannot imagine a better guide through the infuriating, labyrinthine underworld of technology than Vauhini Vara. Searches is so many things—heart-stoppingly sad, a formal high-wire act, a wise and funny and thoughtful encyclopedia of our modern age—but most of all it is a book about human relationships: how imperfectly we made this thing that connects us, and how we might use this thing to re-meet ourselves and each other."— Carmen Maria Machado, author of In the Dream House
“What an original, expansive, epic achievement. I've been waiting for a follow-up to Vauhini Vara's magazine piece ‘Ghosts,’ where she introduced us to a new machine-based technology — a predecessor to ChatGPT — that had the potential to replace writers like herself. What she's delivered in Searches is a riveting, provocative and deeply personal exploration of our ambivalent relationship with technology that spans from our earliest history to the advent of the internet to the race to dominate artificial intelligence. This is a book that will challenge your notions of what it means to be human, investigating our quest for connection and understanding of our place in the world when technology is getting devilishly good at mimicking us. There is no one better to tell this story than Vauhini Vara, with her deeply engaging personal narratives, infused with curiosity and humor, who has grown up with the internet and sat in the front row as the captains of Big Tech brought us the technologies that now permeate our lives. This book doesn't lead you to a simple and automatic conclusion. In perhaps the most human of qualities, it will make you continue to question, to search.”— Cecilia Kang, co-author of An Ugly Truth: Inside Facebook’s Battle for Domination and award-winning New York Times technology and policy reporter
“Searches picks up where Vauhini Vara’s impressive first novel, The Immortal King Rao, left off; this new book deepens, complicates, and amplifies her ongoing investigation into the nature of artificial intelligence, especially in relationship to the human body, mortality, sorrow, and grief. Blessedly free of cant or posture and extremely knowledgeable about (and acutely conscious of its complicity in) the networks it’s mapping, Searches is Vara’s best and most compelling book yet.”—David Shields, author of Reality Hunger
“In Searches, the novelist Vauhini Vara gives us a thought-provoking exploration of our age of digital networks and AI. A seemingly omnipresent observer of this revolution, she takes us on a journey from middle-school chat rooms in 1990s Oklahoma, to an early, pre-OpenAI interview with Sam Altman, to her wary interactions with the then-new, not-yet-public AI model GPT-3 as she seeks to make sense of a youthful trauma that won’t go away. Searches defies simple, familiar narrative at every turn, rendering a compelling warning of how our technology both connects and commodifies us, molding our understanding of our world and ourselves.”—David A. Price, author of Geniuses at War and The Pixar Touch
“A complicated and many-sided book. . . . Searches has many things to recommend it. Vara has a congenial style and, her nose to the zeitgeist, good stories to tell.”—Dwight Garner, The New York Times
“Vara hasn’t lost her journalist edge, as she shows throughout this book . . . Searches is as discomfiting as it is entertaining, with Vara exercising playful technique as a writer while also laying down dire warnings about a tech-dominated future. It’s also a clear reminder that, at least for now, nothing can make language sing like a gifted human mind.”—Harper’s Magazine
“In a growing lineage of books critiquing the power that tech titans wield over our physical world, Searches stands out for emphasizing how they’ve also shaped our private psychological terrain. Vara treats her own life as a vehicle to recount the disquieting history of the internet—or perhaps the other way around. . . . This seamless blend of personal narrative and systemic critique parallels Vara’s subject: technology that has made it feel impossible to compose a self and a society without it.”—The Atlantic
“Vara is an appealing narrator—smart, funny, honest.” —The New Yorker
“Vara consistently applies her own deliberate curiosity to the implications of innovation. Crucially, she brings a gimlet eye, sharpened by her journalism background, to the enthusiastic claims of technology evangelists. . . . In the face of all the technology, Searches’ least mediated observations remain its most haunting.”—Alta
“[Vara] is equipped to take on these issues to an almost uncanny degree. . . . Searches is as discomfiting as it is entertaining, with Vara exercising playful technique as a writer while also laying down dire warnings about a tech-dominated future. It’s also a clear reminder that, at least for now, nothing can make language sing like a gifted human mind.” —San Francisco Chronicle
“A thought-provoking investigation into personal history, creativity, and technology, elements that make us all.”—Alta
“Vara urges readers to think about the digital landscape in new and challenging ways.” —Bustle
“Thought-provoking, accessible and compelling. . . . Will have you questioning what you thought you knew about technology in the 21st century.”—Ms. Magazine
“A masterful memoir written with the precision of a journalist and skills of a creative writer—both of which Vara is—and framed as a conversation with ChatGPT, Searches . . . takes us on an astonishing journey that shocks us from time to time with how little we know about tech, how much tech knows about us, and how much more there is for all of us to know and learn.”—PEN, “The PEN Ten”
“Timely and necessary. . . . Ultimately, this book asks us to engage in the big questions and to ask what makes us human and if we are letting machines and capitalism engulf our humanity.”—International Examiner
“[Vara] invites us to pause and reflect on the agency we still possess in these the late stages of global capitalism, and to imagine alternative, hopeful futures. . . . While her background as a top-tier tech journalist gives the book an air of authority, Vara’s skills as a novelist (The Immortal King Rao, a 2023 Pulitzer finalist) are what bring Searches to life.”—Rocky Mountain Reader
“Provocative. . . . Vara examines the allure and risks of AI-powered communication — questioning whether these tools will liberate us or further exploit our voices.”—Denizen
“Readers will be profoundly moved by this remarkable meditation.”—Publishers Weekly, starred review
“Tragic, funny, and relatable[, Searches] is by turns absurd and insightful, engaging with the ethics of algorithms, surveillance, and privacy in a meaningful way. . . . A must read.”—Library Journal, starred review
“Vara’s essays are beautifully written and profoundly researched, but what sets them apart is their profound vulnerability. Her use of experimental forms . . . pushes the limits of the genre without ever compromising her circumspective, confessional approach. An original essay collection about loss, technology, morality, and identity.”—Kirkus, starred review
“Vara humanizes the influence of technology in highly personal terms [and] projects what the future holds as tech oligarchs gain political influence. . . . Provocative, challenging, and concerning, Vara’s clever, eye-opening approach brings home the often uneasy confluence of individual desire, social benefits, and corporate ambition.” —Booklist, starred review
“A book of essays in the original sense, which is to say that it is a book of experiments, of interrogations: of the internet, of form, of possibilities, of ourselves.”—LitHub, “Most Anticipated Books of 2025”
"Searches is that rare thing: a genuinely thrilling book that breaks open existing forms and structures to offer something entirely new. Vara brings the rigor of a reporter and the exhilarating impulses of an artist into this extraordinary, sui generis book: with wit, insight, tenderness, humility, and clear-eyed candor, she explores the wild frontiers of what our lives have already become. The stakes are high. The ride is terrifying and illuminating at once. This book will leave you changed and stay with you for good."—Leslie Jamison, author of Splinters: Another Kind of Love Story
"I cannot imagine a better guide through the infuriating, labyrinthine underworld of technology than Vauhini Vara. Searches is so many things—heart-stoppingly sad, a formal high-wire act, a wise and funny and thoughtful encyclopedia of our modern age—but most of all it is a book about human relationships: how imperfectly we made this thing that connects us, and how we might use this thing to re-meet ourselves and each other."— Carmen Maria Machado, author of In the Dream House
“What an original, expansive, epic achievement. I've been waiting for a follow-up to Vauhini Vara's magazine piece ‘Ghosts,’ where she introduced us to a new machine-based technology — a predecessor to ChatGPT — that had the potential to replace writers like herself. What she's delivered in Searches is a riveting, provocative and deeply personal exploration of our ambivalent relationship with technology that spans from our earliest history to the advent of the internet to the race to dominate artificial intelligence. This is a book that will challenge your notions of what it means to be human, investigating our quest for connection and understanding of our place in the world when technology is getting devilishly good at mimicking us. There is no one better to tell this story than Vauhini Vara, with her deeply engaging personal narratives, infused with curiosity and humor, who has grown up with the internet and sat in the front row as the captains of Big Tech brought us the technologies that now permeate our lives. This book doesn't lead you to a simple and automatic conclusion. In perhaps the most human of qualities, it will make you continue to question, to search.”— Cecilia Kang, co-author of An Ugly Truth: Inside Facebook’s Battle for Domination and award-winning New York Times technology and policy reporter
“Searches picks up where Vauhini Vara’s impressive first novel, The Immortal King Rao, left off; this new book deepens, complicates, and amplifies her ongoing investigation into the nature of artificial intelligence, especially in relationship to the human body, mortality, sorrow, and grief. Blessedly free of cant or posture and extremely knowledgeable about (and acutely conscious of its complicity in) the networks it’s mapping, Searches is Vara’s best and most compelling book yet.”—David Shields, author of Reality Hunger
“In Searches, the novelist Vauhini Vara gives us a thought-provoking exploration of our age of digital networks and AI. A seemingly omnipresent observer of this revolution, she takes us on a journey from middle-school chat rooms in 1990s Oklahoma, to an early, pre-OpenAI interview with Sam Altman, to her wary interactions with the then-new, not-yet-public AI model GPT-3 as she seeks to make sense of a youthful trauma that won’t go away. Searches defies simple, familiar narrative at every turn, rendering a compelling warning of how our technology both connects and commodifies us, molding our understanding of our world and ourselves.”—David A. Price, author of Geniuses at War and The Pixar Touch
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