Searches

Selfhood in the Digital Age

De: Vauhini Vara

Narrado por: Vauhini Vara, Anastasia Davidson

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: Esquire, Foreign Policy, Lit Hub, 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.

*Includes a downloadable PDF of images from the book

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2025 Vauhini Vara (P)2025 Random House Audio

Reseñas de la Crítica

One of the New York Times’ Nonfiction Books to Read This Spring

One of Esquire’s 20 Most Anticipated Books of 2025

One of Foreign Policy's Most Anticipated Books of 2025

One of Lit Hub’s Most Anticipated Books of 2025

One of Electric Literature’s 48 Books by Women of Color to Read in 2025

“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