Overview

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 Colour to Read in 2025 When Vauhini Vara was fourteen, her sister was diagnosed with cancer. Too terrified to discuss it with a human, Vara instead turned to the fledgling internet with her questions. Those seminal early experiences influenced her decision to become a technology reporter; decades later, she used a predecessor to ChatGPT to help her write about her sister's death. In this provocative, timely and highly personal account of our interdependent relationship with technology, she examines the early days of the internet, the encroachment of social media into our lives and how we might work with AI in the future. Brimming with candour, humour and a probing, roving intelligence, Searches anoints Vara, a Pulitzer Prize finalist, as an essential voice for our moment.

Full Product Details

9781804710685

Table of Contents

Reviews

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 Searches is that rare thing: a genuinely thrilling book that breaks open existing forms and structures - not only the essay but the google search, the Amazon review, the pitch deck, the Chat GPT dialogue box, the AI-generated image - to give us something entirely new...This book will leave you changed, and stay with you for good -- Leslie Jamison, author of SPLINTERS 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 -- Cecilia Kang, co-author of AN UGLY TRUTH

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 is an appealing narrator - smart, funny, honest and a little neurotic. She harbours ambivalence about her reliance on technology products, but she doesn't beat herself up about it. She is thoughtful but not too heady; principled but not preachy -- Anna Wiener * New Yorker * Thought-provoking, accessible and compelling . . . Will have you questioning what you thought you knew about technology in the 21st century * Ms. Magazine * A must-read for anyone interested in technology and artificial intelligence; will also be engaging for memoir lovers * Library Journal (starred review) * Readers will be profoundly moved by this remarkable meditation. * Publishers Weekly (starred review) * Beautifully written and profoundly researched * Kirkus Reviews (starred review) * 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) * 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 Searches is that rare thing: a genuinely thrilling book that breaks open existing forms and structures - not only the essay but the google search, the Amazon review, the pitch deck, the Chat GPT dialogue box, the AI-generated image - to give us something entirely new...This book will leave you changed, and stay with you for good -- Leslie Jamison, author of SPLINTERS 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 -- Cecilia Kang, co-author of AN UGLY TRUTH

Author Information

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 (finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction) and This is Salvaged. She lives in Fort Collins, Colorado.

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