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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 exploration of how technology companies have both fulfilled and exploited the human desire for understanding and connection A MOST ANTICIPATED
Esquire
,
Foreign Policy
, Lit Hub, Electric Literature
When it was released to the public in November 2022, ChatGPT awakened the world to a secretive 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 When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
When it was released to the public in November 2022, ChatGPT awakened the world to a secretive 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 When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
11 pages, Audible Audio
First published April 8, 2025
272 people are currently reading
12030 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 284 reviews
July 12, 2025
One of the most creative books I’ve ever read. Really blown away by how salient the choices were - however, this open interpretation style is going to have some people screaming this book shouldn’t exist, while I’m firmly in the camp that this might be one of the most helpful ways to explore the ways in which tech is consuming us
January 15, 2026
This incredibly smart book recounts the author’s life as someone born in the early 1980s, and how big tech companies have intersected with it, from her time in chat rooms as a young teen to her years as a tech journalist for major publications.
Throughout the book, she asks Chat GPT to assess her writing, challenging it with more pointed questions as the book progresses. She also interweaves data like her Amazon reviews and search history in a way that’s very effective.
She recounts going viral for an experimental essay cowritten with AI. She was prepared (and eager) for pushback and challenging conversations about the use of AI in art. Instead, she received largely unwanted acclaim from AI advocates.
If you’re critical of the overreach of big tech companies and the encroaching power of AI, or if you’re merely curious and don’t know how to feel about it, I think you’ll enjoy this book.
Throughout the book, she asks Chat GPT to assess her writing, challenging it with more pointed questions as the book progresses. She also interweaves data like her Amazon reviews and search history in a way that’s very effective.
She recounts going viral for an experimental essay cowritten with AI. She was prepared (and eager) for pushback and challenging conversations about the use of AI in art. Instead, she received largely unwanted acclaim from AI advocates.
If you’re critical of the overreach of big tech companies and the encroaching power of AI, or if you’re merely curious and don’t know how to feel about it, I think you’ll enjoy this book.
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 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.
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 this 2021 long-form article), 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, take a look at what demographics Google has assigned to you that influence your ad tracking, 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
Filterworld: How Algorithms Flattened Culture by Kyle Chayka | my review
The Worlds I See: Curiosity, Exploration, and Discovery at the Dawn of AI by Fei-Fei Li | my review
The Big Nine: How the Tech Titans and Their Thinking Machines Could Warp Humanity by Amy Webb
Co-Intelligence: Living and Working with AI by Ethan Mollick | my review
Code Dependent: Living in the Shadow of AI 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, take a look at what demographics Google has assigned to you that influence your ad tracking, 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
Filterworld: How Algorithms Flattened Culture by Kyle Chayka | my review
The Worlds I See: Curiosity, Exploration, and Discovery at the Dawn of AI by Fei-Fei Li | my review
The Big Nine: How the Tech Titans and Their Thinking Machines Could Warp Humanity by Amy Webb
Co-Intelligence: Living and Working with AI by Ethan Mollick | my review
Code Dependent: Living in the Shadow of AI by Madhumita Murgia | my review
My statistics:
Book 123 for 2025
Book 2049 cumulatively
July 10, 2025
Great at first, rocky in the middle, nice at the very end. Controversial I guess but I actually really liked the last chapter. It made me cry a little. Humans have such complex lives and incredible stories.
But there’s just too much AI in this. To write a whole book about the dangers of technological capitalism and AI, but then use it SO MUCH throughout the whole book and toward the end be like “I still use ChatGPT all the time 🙈” girl bye. It also bothers me because I simply hate AI’s writing style and do not enjoy reading it, so those parts felt like a major chore.
But there’s just too much AI in this. To write a whole book about the dangers of technological capitalism and AI, but then use it SO MUCH throughout the whole book and toward the end be like “I still use ChatGPT all the time 🙈” girl bye. It also bothers me because I simply hate AI’s writing style and do not enjoy reading it, so those parts felt like a major chore.
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.
July 9, 2025
In this memoir, Vauhini Vara explores memories of her sister, experimentation with chatbots, and how tech companies have both fulfilled and exploited the human desire for understanding and connection. Vara is an experienced journalist in technological fields. She is also the author of one of my favorite books of fiction, The Immortal King Rao. When I found out she had written a book about the evolution of digital technology from the 1990s forward, and particularly of her usage of chatbots in her creative endeavors, I knew I had to read it.
It starts with her earliest uses of the internet, with its dial-up access and chat rooms. It takes the reader through her experiences with digital-age technology, from web browsers to the startup of Amazon to the rise of tech giants to social media to chatbots (specifically ChatGPT). It explores the ways these technologies have fundamentally changed our ways of life. The book features Vara’s essays, paired with her ongoing conversations with ChatGPT that both comment on and critique her writings.
One of these essays includes a series of prompts to the chatbot to help her express her feelings about her sister’s death (in her twenties) from cancer. This essay, entitled “Ghosts," went viral in 2021, and she has expanded upon the experience in this book. The prompts are somewhat repetitious, but Vara’s analysis of the output of this writing experiment is extremely insightful, particularly her observation that the (so-called "creative") output of chatbots can seem like just a string of rather mundane words, interspersed by the occasional golden nugget.
Vara is, in general, a proponent of AI technology as a timesaver, but also observes its potential (major) drawbacks. She examines her own complicity in promoting or even simply using it. She looks at its possibilities for both helping some people express themselves and hindering current authors’ endeavors (potentially threatening their livelihoods). The context of her sister's early death and the trauma it created for the author serves as an emotional touchstone.
One of the best parts for me is the writing style. Vara’s writing is astute and witty. It almost feels like having a conversation with a friend. I have been reading extensively about Artificial Intelligence, and this book is among the best at bringing it down to a person level. It goes well beyond the hyperbole expressed by some of the AI corporate executives and critically examines its output, finding both positives and negatives. She also points out that we do not have to let tech giants dictate the future. We can (and should) influence it. I found it fascinating.
It starts with her earliest uses of the internet, with its dial-up access and chat rooms. It takes the reader through her experiences with digital-age technology, from web browsers to the startup of Amazon to the rise of tech giants to social media to chatbots (specifically ChatGPT). It explores the ways these technologies have fundamentally changed our ways of life. The book features Vara’s essays, paired with her ongoing conversations with ChatGPT that both comment on and critique her writings.
One of these essays includes a series of prompts to the chatbot to help her express her feelings about her sister’s death (in her twenties) from cancer. This essay, entitled “Ghosts," went viral in 2021, and she has expanded upon the experience in this book. The prompts are somewhat repetitious, but Vara’s analysis of the output of this writing experiment is extremely insightful, particularly her observation that the (so-called "creative") output of chatbots can seem like just a string of rather mundane words, interspersed by the occasional golden nugget.
Vara is, in general, a proponent of AI technology as a timesaver, but also observes its potential (major) drawbacks. She examines her own complicity in promoting or even simply using it. She looks at its possibilities for both helping some people express themselves and hindering current authors’ endeavors (potentially threatening their livelihoods). The context of her sister's early death and the trauma it created for the author serves as an emotional touchstone.
One of the best parts for me is the writing style. Vara’s writing is astute and witty. It almost feels like having a conversation with a friend. I have been reading extensively about Artificial Intelligence, and this book is among the best at bringing it down to a person level. It goes well beyond the hyperbole expressed by some of the AI corporate executives and critically examines its output, finding both positives and negatives. She also points out that we do not have to let tech giants dictate the future. We can (and should) influence it. I found it fascinating.
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.
May 8, 2025
3.5. I really enjoyed the memoir aspects of the book and found the inclusion of her ChatGPT conversations to be very creative. However something fell flat for me. In many instances Vara was self aware of her own apathy but seems to rationalize it rather than challenge it, which felt unresolved. Perhaps I am not the right audience, her information on modern technology and how we got here lacked any new insights.
May 27, 2025
thank you to pantheon and netgalley for a digital arc, and thank you to white whale bookstore for the physical copy as an indie bookstore day prize!
i’ve grown up pretty much simultaneously with google and social media and have always been pretty lax about how they use my data. AI, however, is something i’ve been quite wary of using and just not very familiar with. if you’re already quite interested in tech, you might already know the history of these platforms that’s covered early on in the book. if you’re not, like me, i think this is a great crash course on how we got ✨here✨
i have mixed opinions on how much of this book was co-written with AI. after every couple of chapters, we would read AI-generated feedback on those chapters. i wish this had been used a bit less, with more of vara’s chapters in between. i was also really intrigued to see how vauhini vara would combine tech with the grief of losing her sister at a young age. the essay that she co-wrote with chatgpt about her sister’s death really highlights how bad the technology is at coming up with compelling writing. it got tiring to read the AI-generated portions at times, but i think that was the point. it serves as a great reminder of the pitfalls of AI. vauhini vara’s writing style was very readable and full of nuance, so no complaints there.
i have a feeling we will see more and more books with a similar premise to this one, but at this point in time searches feels fresh and thought-provoking.
i’ve grown up pretty much simultaneously with google and social media and have always been pretty lax about how they use my data. AI, however, is something i’ve been quite wary of using and just not very familiar with. if you’re already quite interested in tech, you might already know the history of these platforms that’s covered early on in the book. if you’re not, like me, i think this is a great crash course on how we got ✨here✨
i have mixed opinions on how much of this book was co-written with AI. after every couple of chapters, we would read AI-generated feedback on those chapters. i wish this had been used a bit less, with more of vara’s chapters in between. i was also really intrigued to see how vauhini vara would combine tech with the grief of losing her sister at a young age. the essay that she co-wrote with chatgpt about her sister’s death really highlights how bad the technology is at coming up with compelling writing. it got tiring to read the AI-generated portions at times, but i think that was the point. it serves as a great reminder of the pitfalls of AI. vauhini vara’s writing style was very readable and full of nuance, so no complaints there.
i have a feeling we will see more and more books with a similar premise to this one, but at this point in time searches feels fresh and thought-provoking.
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.
July 5, 2025
it's rare that i pick up a nonfiction book. but whenever I do, I'm always so impressed!!!
Technology and AI is a topic that I think about constantly. As an English major who wants to enter the publishing industry, I'm always worried about how technology is going to change the industry and how creativity will evolve in the future. And this book was so incredibly informative; it used AI in such an interesting way, and it added an equally balanced, non-biased(ish) look at the tech industry.
I'm not gonna lie, I use AI too. I've had professors that are strictly against it, but I've also had English professors who use AI to help with their own writing—emphasis on "help"; it's not writing for them, but rather helping them perfect their writing, whether it's giving them ideas or simply helping with edits and proofreading. In other words, the use of AI for creativity is a very nuanced and complex discussion, and there clearly isn't a right or wrong answer because it's not like AI is going to be disappearing anytime soon. People like Sam Altman are going to be pushing for an AI future, and we'll never truly be able to get back to a time without it. Even Vara admits it herself, almost like a guilty pleasure: as a writer, it seems wrong to be using AI, especially because of how detrimental it is to the environment, but something about it keeps her interested, and she's still using it to this day.
I first heard of Vauhini Vara last semester in my creative writing class, where our professor assigned us to read her article for The New Yorker about using ChatGPT to write a short story about the passing of her sister, and how one of her favorite lines from that story was actually written by ChatGPT. How the AI bot was able to exquisitely describe what it felt like to grieve and mourn the loss of her sister, even though ChatGPT isn't even human and can't comprehend emotions. Fastforward a month or three later, I saw this book at the library and had to read more about her experience with AI.
To be honest, I wish I remembered this entire book. I wish I took notes, but I lowkey got lazy LMAO. I did take pictures of some great quotes (unfortunately I couldn't underline or annotate my copy because this was from the library), and I love the way Vara explores humanity and how we're forced to coexist with the sudden growth of technology. I mean, even before I was in kindergarten, I was always interested in the new Apple devices, whether it was the iPod or iPhone. I think I got the iPhone 4 right when it came out, and I was literally like 5 I had no business with an iPhone LMAOOO. my entire life has been filled with technology, and I really appreciated how Vara tracks how technology has grown over the years, starting all the way from the 1900s (which was before my time, but still).
Although it focuses on technology and AI, this book explores so much more than that, including our identities, community, feminism, patriarchy, capitalism (and socialism), rich vs. poor, and so much more. It truly is such an insightful book and I cannot recommend this enough. This book is so important, especially during this period of time when everyone is fearing the power of AI and how many jobs it would take away.
Sam Altman imagines a future where our lives are completely changed by AI, when prices are all down and we'll have so much more time to spend with loved ones, create works of art, etc. But it's all theory. It's a positive outlook on AI, but it's not reality yet. We have the choice to change reality. It's all about what we choose to do with AI, and looking at what we've done with it so far (create stupid videos on Tiktok about death seeking old ladies at the bingo table, have different artists sing covers of songs, and write short stories and poems in the form of Shakespeare, create explicit images of celebrities like Taylor Swift, etc.) our future really isn't looking so bright.
This book also dives deep into the history of Amazon. I never knew that Amazon was originally supposed to be an online bookstore!!! How fascinating!!! And now it's doing terrible things to the book industry!!! How wonderful!!!
Anyway, it's an expansive book that talks about so much stuff. And I think the last chapter really ties the entire book together so well. I loved it. That's all I gotta say. This is required reading now. Ok bye!!!!!!
Technology and AI is a topic that I think about constantly. As an English major who wants to enter the publishing industry, I'm always worried about how technology is going to change the industry and how creativity will evolve in the future. And this book was so incredibly informative; it used AI in such an interesting way, and it added an equally balanced, non-biased(ish) look at the tech industry.
I'm not gonna lie, I use AI too. I've had professors that are strictly against it, but I've also had English professors who use AI to help with their own writing—emphasis on "help"; it's not writing for them, but rather helping them perfect their writing, whether it's giving them ideas or simply helping with edits and proofreading. In other words, the use of AI for creativity is a very nuanced and complex discussion, and there clearly isn't a right or wrong answer because it's not like AI is going to be disappearing anytime soon. People like Sam Altman are going to be pushing for an AI future, and we'll never truly be able to get back to a time without it. Even Vara admits it herself, almost like a guilty pleasure: as a writer, it seems wrong to be using AI, especially because of how detrimental it is to the environment, but something about it keeps her interested, and she's still using it to this day.
I first heard of Vauhini Vara last semester in my creative writing class, where our professor assigned us to read her article for The New Yorker about using ChatGPT to write a short story about the passing of her sister, and how one of her favorite lines from that story was actually written by ChatGPT. How the AI bot was able to exquisitely describe what it felt like to grieve and mourn the loss of her sister, even though ChatGPT isn't even human and can't comprehend emotions. Fastforward a month or three later, I saw this book at the library and had to read more about her experience with AI.
To be honest, I wish I remembered this entire book. I wish I took notes, but I lowkey got lazy LMAO. I did take pictures of some great quotes (unfortunately I couldn't underline or annotate my copy because this was from the library), and I love the way Vara explores humanity and how we're forced to coexist with the sudden growth of technology. I mean, even before I was in kindergarten, I was always interested in the new Apple devices, whether it was the iPod or iPhone. I think I got the iPhone 4 right when it came out, and I was literally like 5 I had no business with an iPhone LMAOOO. my entire life has been filled with technology, and I really appreciated how Vara tracks how technology has grown over the years, starting all the way from the 1900s (which was before my time, but still).
Although it focuses on technology and AI, this book explores so much more than that, including our identities, community, feminism, patriarchy, capitalism (and socialism), rich vs. poor, and so much more. It truly is such an insightful book and I cannot recommend this enough. This book is so important, especially during this period of time when everyone is fearing the power of AI and how many jobs it would take away.
Sam Altman imagines a future where our lives are completely changed by AI, when prices are all down and we'll have so much more time to spend with loved ones, create works of art, etc. But it's all theory. It's a positive outlook on AI, but it's not reality yet. We have the choice to change reality. It's all about what we choose to do with AI, and looking at what we've done with it so far (create stupid videos on Tiktok about death seeking old ladies at the bingo table, have different artists sing covers of songs, and write short stories and poems in the form of Shakespeare, create explicit images of celebrities like Taylor Swift, etc.) our future really isn't looking so bright.
This book also dives deep into the history of Amazon. I never knew that Amazon was originally supposed to be an online bookstore!!! How fascinating!!! And now it's doing terrible things to the book industry!!! How wonderful!!!
Anyway, it's an expansive book that talks about so much stuff. And I think the last chapter really ties the entire book together so well. I loved it. That's all I gotta say. This is required reading now. Ok bye!!!!!!
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November 19, 2025This is one of Book Riot’s Best Books of 2025:
What does it mean to be a person in a moment when technology is increasingly good at performing humanity? What does it mean to create art and seek connection when algorithms purport to replace both? Vara's attempt to co-write a book with AI ventures to surprising places and achieves a level of nuance that is all too uncommon in today's discourse. Part performance art, part social commentary, this is the book about AI and creativity I’ve been waiting for.
- Rebecca Joines Schinsky
What does it mean to be a person in a moment when technology is increasingly good at performing humanity? What does it mean to create art and seek connection when algorithms purport to replace both? Vara's attempt to co-write a book with AI ventures to surprising places and achieves a level of nuance that is all too uncommon in today's discourse. Part performance art, part social commentary, this is the book about AI and creativity I’ve been waiting for.
- Rebecca Joines Schinsky
May 9, 2025
It's a true shame that this book is not getting more attention because it's without question one of the best things I've read this year. The nonfiction really is hitting for me.
Novelist and tech journalist Vara writes about her relationship with the internet, with communication, with her late sister, and then feeds these passages into ChatGTP - and a few other AIs - and asks it what it thinks, and gives us its responses. Sometimes she argues back and forth a bit with it. Once, she asks it to translate an essay she'd written in Spanish to English for her. Another time, she asks it to repeatedly finish a passage about the immediate aftermath of her sister's death, and it gets a little closer to home each time she gives it more to feed on.
If you're someone who is terrified or confused by the recent onset of these machine learning tools, you should read this. If you love to read or listen to someone just think about and analyze thorny issues you don't have a great grasp on, you should read this. If you love an excellent, unique audiobook, you should read this.
I immediately requested Vara's novel, The Immortal King Rao, from the library because I think I need to be in her brain again soon.
Novelist and tech journalist Vara writes about her relationship with the internet, with communication, with her late sister, and then feeds these passages into ChatGTP - and a few other AIs - and asks it what it thinks, and gives us its responses. Sometimes she argues back and forth a bit with it. Once, she asks it to translate an essay she'd written in Spanish to English for her. Another time, she asks it to repeatedly finish a passage about the immediate aftermath of her sister's death, and it gets a little closer to home each time she gives it more to feed on.
If you're someone who is terrified or confused by the recent onset of these machine learning tools, you should read this. If you love to read or listen to someone just think about and analyze thorny issues you don't have a great grasp on, you should read this. If you love an excellent, unique audiobook, you should read this.
I immediately requested Vara's novel, The Immortal King Rao, from the library because I think I need to be in her brain again soon.
August 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.
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 22, 2025
Loved this inventive and reflective memoir by a fellow geriatric millennial.
December 1, 2025
entire chapters of this book are copied straight out of chat gbt. there’s also a chapter that consists only of the author’s search history within the span of like a decade or something. finally, in the worst audio production choice that I have encountered listening to audiobooks, a chapter on ai translation has the english version of the audio playing over the spanish version of the audio simultaneously, making the chapter utterly unlistenable. hack.
November 22, 2025
A Big Tech, meta mind-fuck, in a good (and obviously not-so-good) way. Vara is arguably a perfect person to write about the technological creep into human life, as she came of age during the rise of the internet, was a social media reporter when those barely existed, and explored ChatGPT in its early stages. The result of her personal and professional experiences, combined with expert research, is this hybrid of memoir, tech history, and social commentary.
The book focuses on three big technological advances in the late 20th and early 21st centuries: the search engine, social media, and artificial intelligence. Each of these, for better or worse, have completely altered our lives; maybe they’ve made things easier, in terms of ready access to information and connection, ease of completing tasks, etc., but they also pose a cost, which is a disconnect from reality and large companies collecting and using our data.
Alongside her research on companies like Google and Amazon, Vara includes more personal data, like her Google search archive, Twitter interests, and Amazon purchase history. These tell a startlingly accurate story of her life over the years (for instance, there is a clear narrative about her pregnancy and parenting, just from looking at some of these archives) and had me curious about my own digital archives (while also acknowledging that I probably don’t want to look these up).
In addition to stories about her excursions into chatrooms of the early internet, these data groups were a fascinating inclusion, part memoir and part commentary that makes you turn a mirror on your own digital life. I don’t think even the most tech-conscious among us realize how much information we give to companies and the surveillance state. We don’t often see it all laid out in this way, so it’s hard to grasp just how much each little data point adds up to a shockingly detailed account of our existence.
The most interesting part of this book is Vara’s exploration into AI and ChatGPT, specifically with regard to writing. As a writer, she wanted to see just how these tools worked with that medium, so she crafts an essay that employs a mix of AI and her own writing. While she supposedly does this to point out the ineffectiveness of AI tools in creative work, it kind of backfires. The essay becomes so popular once it’s published that people start contacting her to collaborate on more AI-involved work. I found it maddening that this experiment came off in a positive light to anyone, let alone other creators.
So, underlying all this are the obvious ethical concerns with using large evil companies like Google and Amazon and AI in our daily lives. If I had any hangups about this book, it’s here, for while Vara brilliantly crafts this kind of meta (not Meta, haha) book that doesn’t just talk about its subjects but fully incorporates them into the book, she admits continued use of things like ChatGPT after her experiment with it has concluded. That was a bit disappointing to read, along with the many unnecessary purchases in her Amazon history that she does mental gymnastics to justify.
On the other hand, who am I to judge? Who is anyone?? There is no ethical consumption under capitalism, so we all give our data and money to things we shouldn’t, and sometimes with little choice to do otherwise. While seeing my doctor recently, the whiteboard in the exam room stated she would be using AI during the visit. What to do in that situation? I needed immediate medical care and couldn’t easily walk out (I actually couldn’t walk at all which was the problem, but that’s a whole other story lolllllll). And so maybe by admitting she continues to use some of these things that are toxic to our digital and real lives, Vara is making a larger point that much of it is becoming increasingly harder to avoid and addictive AF.
I don’t know that there’s necessarily a hopeful ending to this, at least not one that will be handed to us. Ultimately, we have to treat our digital health like we do mental or physical health. Just like you would be conscious about what you eat, you need to be conscious about what tools you use online, what information you provide them, and how much use is too much. Big props to Vara for this memoir-slash-tech-slash-sociological hybrid.
The book focuses on three big technological advances in the late 20th and early 21st centuries: the search engine, social media, and artificial intelligence. Each of these, for better or worse, have completely altered our lives; maybe they’ve made things easier, in terms of ready access to information and connection, ease of completing tasks, etc., but they also pose a cost, which is a disconnect from reality and large companies collecting and using our data.
Alongside her research on companies like Google and Amazon, Vara includes more personal data, like her Google search archive, Twitter interests, and Amazon purchase history. These tell a startlingly accurate story of her life over the years (for instance, there is a clear narrative about her pregnancy and parenting, just from looking at some of these archives) and had me curious about my own digital archives (while also acknowledging that I probably don’t want to look these up).
In addition to stories about her excursions into chatrooms of the early internet, these data groups were a fascinating inclusion, part memoir and part commentary that makes you turn a mirror on your own digital life. I don’t think even the most tech-conscious among us realize how much information we give to companies and the surveillance state. We don’t often see it all laid out in this way, so it’s hard to grasp just how much each little data point adds up to a shockingly detailed account of our existence.
The most interesting part of this book is Vara’s exploration into AI and ChatGPT, specifically with regard to writing. As a writer, she wanted to see just how these tools worked with that medium, so she crafts an essay that employs a mix of AI and her own writing. While she supposedly does this to point out the ineffectiveness of AI tools in creative work, it kind of backfires. The essay becomes so popular once it’s published that people start contacting her to collaborate on more AI-involved work. I found it maddening that this experiment came off in a positive light to anyone, let alone other creators.
So, underlying all this are the obvious ethical concerns with using large evil companies like Google and Amazon and AI in our daily lives. If I had any hangups about this book, it’s here, for while Vara brilliantly crafts this kind of meta (not Meta, haha) book that doesn’t just talk about its subjects but fully incorporates them into the book, she admits continued use of things like ChatGPT after her experiment with it has concluded. That was a bit disappointing to read, along with the many unnecessary purchases in her Amazon history that she does mental gymnastics to justify.
On the other hand, who am I to judge? Who is anyone?? There is no ethical consumption under capitalism, so we all give our data and money to things we shouldn’t, and sometimes with little choice to do otherwise. While seeing my doctor recently, the whiteboard in the exam room stated she would be using AI during the visit. What to do in that situation? I needed immediate medical care and couldn’t easily walk out (I actually couldn’t walk at all which was the problem, but that’s a whole other story lolllllll). And so maybe by admitting she continues to use some of these things that are toxic to our digital and real lives, Vara is making a larger point that much of it is becoming increasingly harder to avoid and addictive AF.
I don’t know that there’s necessarily a hopeful ending to this, at least not one that will be handed to us. Ultimately, we have to treat our digital health like we do mental or physical health. Just like you would be conscious about what you eat, you need to be conscious about what tools you use online, what information you provide them, and how much use is too much. Big props to Vara for this memoir-slash-tech-slash-sociological hybrid.
January 13, 2026
4.75!! Really, really loved reading this. It was so creative in how it utilized ChatGPT within the book to critique it, and was very much more show than tell. It was a fantastic blend of non-fiction information, personal storytelling, systematic/technological critique, and philosophical questions. Some chapters will land better than others per reader. I would highly recommend if you’re grappling with the rise of technology and how it’s affecting our sense of human-ness, creativity, and communities in a non terrifying way.
October 13, 2025
Thanks, I hate it 🥲 — ChatGPT regurgitated drivel.
August 16, 2025
Everything I wanted it to be
December 29, 2025
A super important, timely book that recounts major tech “advances” of the past 30 years alongside key moments in the author’s life. Inventive, often playful, prose blends with online tools from Google search histories to ChatGPT to juxtapose the human and the inhuman. This is exactly the kind of book we need to prepare for the future we are stepping into. Friends, please read it so I have someone to talk to about it.
November 12, 2025
1. I joined goodreads in April 2012. I was 16 years old, and I knew enough about internet safety to not use my full name. In fact, I don’t think I used my real name at all.
I named myself something I thought sounded literary but not pretentious, the kind of name that might belong to a person who read late at night and didn’t talk much at school. It felt like a secret room I could build from other people’s sentences.
2. I joined goodreads in April 2012. I was 16 years old, and I knew enough about internet safety to not use my full name. In fact, I don’t think I used my real name at all. I called myself Melody. I had recently realized that not all teenage girls read books, and so reading books could be something that was a part of my identity, rather than just something to fill my time.
On Goodreads, that identity could be arranged neatly—five stars for the books I loved, one star for the ones I hated, and a few half-finished reviews that tried to sound older than I was. It was the first place I saw how taste could be performed, how a bookshelf could double as a mirror.
3. I joined goodreads in April 2012. I was 16 years old, and I knew enough about internet safety to not use my full name. In fact, I don’t think I used my real name at all. I called myself Melody. I had recently realized that not all teenage girls read books, and so reading books could be something that was a part of my identity, rather than just something to fill my time.
That was something I had a lot of—time. Because I was homeschooled. I suppose that’s also why I had read so many books. I felt my lack of experiences acutely, so I tried to fill it in using books, which is volumes less embarrassing than making mistakes in real life.
Online, no one could tell the difference between a girl who had lived and a girl who had only read. That was part of the thrill. I could gesture toward a world I hadn’t entered yet — the messy, textured world of parties, heartbreak, failure — by borrowing the language of those who had. I rated novels about cities I’d never seen, romances I’d never had, tragedies that were nothing like mine. It wasn’t lying, exactly, but a kind of rehearsal. Goodreads became a stage small enough to be safe. I could practice being a person who said things out loud.
4. I joined goodreads in April 2012. I was 16 years old, and I knew enough about internet safety to not use my full name. In fact, I don’t think I used my real name at all. I called myself Melody. I had recently realized that not all teenage girls read books, and so reading books could be something that was a part of my identity, rather than just something to fill my time.
That was something I had a lot of—time. Because I was homeschooled. I suppose that’s also why I had read so many books. I felt my lack of experiences acutely, so I tried to fill it in using books, which is volumes less embarrassing than making mistakes in real life. I think I wanted to skip the embarrassing part of adolescence, or maybe just of life generally speaking.
That’s probably why even though I started logging my books on goodreads in 2012, it wasn’t until 2015, when I was an English Major, that I started actually writing reviews, that I stopped being quite so afraid of the prospect of looking back on my own thoughts, immortalized for all time.
Or maybe I was finally reading books that I felt were “literary” enough. The first review I wrote was for “The History of Rasselas Prince of Abyssinia." Part of the review read:
I remember typing those lines carefully, as if Johnson might be watching from the eighteenth century. I wanted the review to sound analytical, but what I really meant was: I was tired of trying to have a plan. I didn’t yet know that writing online could be a kind of prayer — sent into the ether, hoping for an echo.
5. I joined goodreads in April 2012. I was 16 years old, and I knew enough about internet safety to not use my full name. In fact, I don’t think I used my real name at all. I called myself Melody. I had recently realized that not all teenage girls read books, and so reading books could be something that was a part of my identity, rather than just something to fill my time.
That was something I had a lot of—time. Because I was homeschooled. I suppose that’s also why I had read so many books. I felt my lack of experiences acutely, so I tried to fill it in using books, which is volumes less embarrassing than making mistakes in real life. I think I wanted to skip the embarrassing part of adolescence, or maybe just of life generally speaking.
That’s probably why even though I started logging my books on goodreads in 2012, it wasn’t until 2015, when I was an English Major, that I started actually writing reviews, that I stopped being quite so afraid of the prospect of looking back on my own thoughts, immortalized for all time.
Or maybe I was finally reading books that I felt were “literary” enough. The first review I wrote was for “The History of Rasselas Prince of Abyssinia." Part of the review read:
I rated it three stars. My own memory of this book, a decade later, was that I was bored out of my mind while reading it, and spent most of the class periods laughing at the cartoons my roommate would draw on her notebooks.
But reading the review now, I can tell how much I wanted it to mean something. I didn’t know how to write about being numb, so I wrote about compassion instead — about what it must have felt like to lose so much and still make something of it. That’s what the book review was, really: a wish that effort could be redemptive. The three stars weren’t for the novel; they were for the attempt — his, and mine.
6. I joined goodreads in April 2012. I was 16 years old, and I knew enough about internet safety to not use my full name. In fact, I don’t think I used my real name at all. I called myself Melody. I had recently realized that not all teenage girls read books, and so reading books could be something that was a part of my identity, rather than just something to fill my time.
That was something I had a lot of—time. Because I was homeschooled. I suppose that’s also why I had read so many books. I felt my lack of experiences acutely, so I tried to fill it in using books, which is volumes less embarrassing than making mistakes in real life. I think I wanted to skip the embarrassing part of adolescence, or maybe just of life generally speaking.
That’s probably why even though I started logging my books on goodreads in 2012, it wasn’t until 2015, when I was an English Major, that I started actually writing reviews, that I stopped being quite so afraid of the prospect of looking back on my own thoughts, immortalized for all time.
Or maybe I was finally reading books that I felt were “literary” enough. The first review I wrote was for “The History of Rasselas Prince of Abyssinia." Part of the review read:
I rated it three stars. My own memory of this book, a decade later, was that I was bored out of my mind while reading it, and spent most of the class periods laughing at the cartoons my roommate would draw on her notebooks.
Anyway, I bring all of this up only because of this book, the one I’m reviewing right now. Searches. It’s about (among other things) our relationship with technology, about our relationship with ourselves, and about the conversations between technology and humanity—figuratively, a decade ago, literally, these days.
It’s also about the illusion that the search itself might yield meaning—that if we just phrase the question right, we’ll be granted an answer. Reading Searches, I felt the same self-consciousness I did writing those Goodreads reviews: the awareness that language, once released into the digital world, becomes both intimate and performative. Vara’s narrator types questions into a search bar that no longer behaves like a tool but like a mirror, and I recognized that gesture—the hope that something beyond the self might translate your confusion back to you in clearer terms.
7. I joined goodreads in April 2012. I was 16 years old, and I knew enough about internet safety to not use my full name. In fact, I don’t think I used my real name at all. I called myself Melody. I had recently realized that not all teenage girls read books, and so reading books could be something that was a part of my identity, rather than just something to fill my time.
That was something I had a lot of—time. Because I was homeschooled. I suppose that’s also why I had read so many books. I felt my lack of experiences acutely, so I tried to fill it in using books, which is volumes less embarrassing than making mistakes in real life. I think I wanted to skip the embarrassing part of adolescence, or maybe just of life generally speaking.
That’s probably why even though I started logging my books on goodreads in 2012, it wasn’t until 2015, when I was an English Major, that I started actually writing reviews, that I stopped being quite so afraid of the prospect of looking back on my own thoughts, immortalized for all time.
Or maybe I was finally reading books that I felt were “literary” enough. The first review I wrote was for “The History of Rasselas Prince of Abyssinia." Part of the review read:
I rated it three stars. My own memory of this book, a decade later, was that I was bored out of my mind while reading it, and spent most of the class periods laughing at the cartoons my roommate would draw on her notebooks.
Anyway, I bring all of this up only because of this book, Searches. It’s about (among other things) our relationship with technology, with ourselves, and about the conversations between technology and humanity—figuratively, literally. We construct ourselves from the tools we are given—the empty box in the goodreads review section which asks simply, “What did you think?” and so creates a platform for an identity to unfold.
In Searches, that box is the search bar—another blank field demanding an answer it can’t understand. Vara’s narrator keeps typing into it anyway, asking questions that swell beyond what language or code can hold: about her sister, about death, about meaning. The machine returns fragments, sometimes relevant, sometimes absurd, always partial. Reading it, I thought about how many of my own sentences were written into boxes that promised connection but only looped me back to myself. The novel doesn’t suggest we should stop searching; it only reveals how easily our longing migrates from page to screen, from thought to query. What we call expression might just be a more elaborate way of asking the same question over and over: Is anyone there?
8. I joined goodreads in April 2012. I was 16 years old, and I knew enough about internet safety to not use my full name. In fact, I don’t think I used my real name at all. I called myself Melody. I had recently realized that not all teenage girls read books, and so reading books could be something that was a part of my identity, rather than just something to fill my time.
That was something I had a lot of—time. Because I was homeschooled. I suppose that’s also why I had read so many books. I felt my lack of experiences acutely, so I tried to fill it in using books, which is volumes less embarrassing than making mistakes in real life. I think I wanted to skip the embarrassing part of adolescence, or maybe just of life generally speaking.
That’s probably why even though I started logging my books on goodreads in 2012, it wasn’t until 2015, when I was an English Major, that I started actually writing reviews, that I stopped being quite so afraid of the prospect of looking back on my own thoughts, immortalized for all time.
Or maybe I was finally reading books that I felt were “literary” enough. The first review I wrote was for “The History of Rasselas Prince of Abyssinia." Part of the review read:
I rated it three stars. My own memory of this book, a decade later, was that I was bored out of my mind while reading it, and spent most of the class periods laughing at the cartoons my roommate would draw on her notebooks.
Anyway, I bring all of this up only because of this book, Searches. It’s about (among other things) our relationship with technology, with ourselves, and about the conversations between technology and humanity—figuratively, literally. We construct ourselves from the tools we are given—the empty box in the goodreads review section which asks simply, “What did you think?” and so creates a platform for an identity to unfold.
So it’s a memoir, yes, in the truest sense of the word. Vara hands us the digital artifacts of her life, describes the tech landscape which evolved while most of us were just doing our 9-5s, and holds in her hands the contradictions of being a human using technology. The chapter is called, “What is it like to be alive?”
By the end of Searches, that question—what is it like to be alive?—felt like something I’d been asking since I was sixteen, sitting in front of a desktop computer in the quiet of my parents’ house. My Goodreads account is, in its own way, an archive of that version of me: a girl who thought she could write herself into existence, who mistook articulation for experience. I didn’t have parties or heartbreaks or city lights, but I had sentences, and I believed they could substitute for living. Searches made me see how those early reviews weren’t just about books—they were about proof. Each one said: I’m here, I’m thinking, I exist. Maybe that’s what being sixteen online was, for me—a rehearsal for being alive.
9. I joined goodreads in April 2012. I was 16 years old, and I knew enough about internet safety to not use my full name. In fact, I don’t think I used my real name at all. I called myself Melody. I had recently realized that not all teenage girls read books, and so reading books could be something that was a part of my identity, rather than just something to fill my time.
That was something I had a lot of—time. Because I was homeschooled. I suppose that’s also why I had read so many books. I felt my lack of experiences acutely, so I tried to fill it in using books, which is volumes less embarrassing than making mistakes in real life. I think I wanted to skip the embarrassing part of adolescence, or maybe just of life generally speaking.
That’s probably why even though I started logging my books on goodreads in 2012, it wasn’t until 2015, when I was an English Major, that I started actually writing reviews, that I stopped being quite so afraid of the prospect of looking back on my own thoughts, immortalized for all time.
Or maybe I was finally reading books that I felt were “literary” enough. The first review I wrote was for “The History of Rasselas Prince of Abyssinia."Part of the review read:
I rated it three stars. My own memory of this book, a decade later, was that I was bored out of my mind while reading it, and spent most of the class periods laughing at the cartoons my roommate would draw on her notebooks.
Anyway, I bring all of this up only because of this book, Searches. It’s about (among other things) our relationship with technology, with ourselves, and about the conversations between technology and humanity—figuratively, literally. We construct ourselves from the tools we are given—the empty box in the goodreads review section which asks simply, “What did you think?” and so creates a platform for an identity to unfold.
So it’s a memoir, yes, in the truest sense of the word. Vara hands us the digital artifacts of her life, describes the tech landscape which evolved while most of us were just doing our 9-5s, and holds in her hands the contradictions of being a human using technology. The chapter is called, “What is it like to be alive?”
She captured this for me, at least: the feeling that I love technology & I hate it, both at the same time. I’ve used it to construct myself, to hammer out silly thoughts to send into the void, where it is unread & unuseful, except perhaps as a contribution to AI training data.
Whatever being alive is, Vara suggests that it is these experiences that make us different from AI, that like Rasselas, we spend our lives asking how we can find happiness in a world of great sadness, that we spend our lives writing book reviews describing how we experienced someone else’s imagined experiences, in order to build up for ourselves some idea of self, the life we have or want, in the words we leave behind. To perform identity into existence.
To be human is to be 16 and finding a place yourself on the internet, that is certainly true. Whether or not this is something AI can never have, however, remains to be seen.
I named myself something I thought sounded literary but not pretentious, the kind of name that might belong to a person who read late at night and didn’t talk much at school. It felt like a secret room I could build from other people’s sentences.
2. I joined goodreads in April 2012. I was 16 years old, and I knew enough about internet safety to not use my full name. In fact, I don’t think I used my real name at all. I called myself Melody. I had recently realized that not all teenage girls read books, and so reading books could be something that was a part of my identity, rather than just something to fill my time.
On Goodreads, that identity could be arranged neatly—five stars for the books I loved, one star for the ones I hated, and a few half-finished reviews that tried to sound older than I was. It was the first place I saw how taste could be performed, how a bookshelf could double as a mirror.
3. I joined goodreads in April 2012. I was 16 years old, and I knew enough about internet safety to not use my full name. In fact, I don’t think I used my real name at all. I called myself Melody. I had recently realized that not all teenage girls read books, and so reading books could be something that was a part of my identity, rather than just something to fill my time.
That was something I had a lot of—time. Because I was homeschooled. I suppose that’s also why I had read so many books. I felt my lack of experiences acutely, so I tried to fill it in using books, which is volumes less embarrassing than making mistakes in real life.
Online, no one could tell the difference between a girl who had lived and a girl who had only read. That was part of the thrill. I could gesture toward a world I hadn’t entered yet — the messy, textured world of parties, heartbreak, failure — by borrowing the language of those who had. I rated novels about cities I’d never seen, romances I’d never had, tragedies that were nothing like mine. It wasn’t lying, exactly, but a kind of rehearsal. Goodreads became a stage small enough to be safe. I could practice being a person who said things out loud.
4. I joined goodreads in April 2012. I was 16 years old, and I knew enough about internet safety to not use my full name. In fact, I don’t think I used my real name at all. I called myself Melody. I had recently realized that not all teenage girls read books, and so reading books could be something that was a part of my identity, rather than just something to fill my time.
That was something I had a lot of—time. Because I was homeschooled. I suppose that’s also why I had read so many books. I felt my lack of experiences acutely, so I tried to fill it in using books, which is volumes less embarrassing than making mistakes in real life. I think I wanted to skip the embarrassing part of adolescence, or maybe just of life generally speaking.
That’s probably why even though I started logging my books on goodreads in 2012, it wasn’t until 2015, when I was an English Major, that I started actually writing reviews, that I stopped being quite so afraid of the prospect of looking back on my own thoughts, immortalized for all time.
Or maybe I was finally reading books that I felt were “literary” enough. The first review I wrote was for “The History of Rasselas Prince of Abyssinia." Part of the review read:
“I didn’t expect to like this book, but I did. It’s about how you can’t really plan happiness, and how even if you try, it keeps slipping away. I thought it would be boring, but it wasn’t. It made me feel a little less like I had to know what I was doing.”
I remember typing those lines carefully, as if Johnson might be watching from the eighteenth century. I wanted the review to sound analytical, but what I really meant was: I was tired of trying to have a plan. I didn’t yet know that writing online could be a kind of prayer — sent into the ether, hoping for an echo.
5. I joined goodreads in April 2012. I was 16 years old, and I knew enough about internet safety to not use my full name. In fact, I don’t think I used my real name at all. I called myself Melody. I had recently realized that not all teenage girls read books, and so reading books could be something that was a part of my identity, rather than just something to fill my time.
That was something I had a lot of—time. Because I was homeschooled. I suppose that’s also why I had read so many books. I felt my lack of experiences acutely, so I tried to fill it in using books, which is volumes less embarrassing than making mistakes in real life. I think I wanted to skip the embarrassing part of adolescence, or maybe just of life generally speaking.
That’s probably why even though I started logging my books on goodreads in 2012, it wasn’t until 2015, when I was an English Major, that I started actually writing reviews, that I stopped being quite so afraid of the prospect of looking back on my own thoughts, immortalized for all time.
Or maybe I was finally reading books that I felt were “literary” enough. The first review I wrote was for “The History of Rasselas Prince of Abyssinia." Part of the review read:
“Each of those on the journey leave with different conclusions - each corresponding to their temperament, but we, the readers, are not forced to leave with anything. Instead, it feels as though we are allowed to follow Johnson in his own contemplation of life and what happiness truly means in a life of great sadness.”
I rated it three stars. My own memory of this book, a decade later, was that I was bored out of my mind while reading it, and spent most of the class periods laughing at the cartoons my roommate would draw on her notebooks.
But reading the review now, I can tell how much I wanted it to mean something. I didn’t know how to write about being numb, so I wrote about compassion instead — about what it must have felt like to lose so much and still make something of it. That’s what the book review was, really: a wish that effort could be redemptive. The three stars weren’t for the novel; they were for the attempt — his, and mine.
6. I joined goodreads in April 2012. I was 16 years old, and I knew enough about internet safety to not use my full name. In fact, I don’t think I used my real name at all. I called myself Melody. I had recently realized that not all teenage girls read books, and so reading books could be something that was a part of my identity, rather than just something to fill my time.
That was something I had a lot of—time. Because I was homeschooled. I suppose that’s also why I had read so many books. I felt my lack of experiences acutely, so I tried to fill it in using books, which is volumes less embarrassing than making mistakes in real life. I think I wanted to skip the embarrassing part of adolescence, or maybe just of life generally speaking.
That’s probably why even though I started logging my books on goodreads in 2012, it wasn’t until 2015, when I was an English Major, that I started actually writing reviews, that I stopped being quite so afraid of the prospect of looking back on my own thoughts, immortalized for all time.
Or maybe I was finally reading books that I felt were “literary” enough. The first review I wrote was for “The History of Rasselas Prince of Abyssinia." Part of the review read:
“Each of those on the journey leave with different conclusions - each corresponding to their temperament, but we, the readers, are not forced to leave with anything. Instead, it feels as though we are allowed to follow Johnson in his own contemplation of life and what happiness truly means in a life of great sadness.”
I rated it three stars. My own memory of this book, a decade later, was that I was bored out of my mind while reading it, and spent most of the class periods laughing at the cartoons my roommate would draw on her notebooks.
Anyway, I bring all of this up only because of this book, the one I’m reviewing right now. Searches. It’s about (among other things) our relationship with technology, about our relationship with ourselves, and about the conversations between technology and humanity—figuratively, a decade ago, literally, these days.
It’s also about the illusion that the search itself might yield meaning—that if we just phrase the question right, we’ll be granted an answer. Reading Searches, I felt the same self-consciousness I did writing those Goodreads reviews: the awareness that language, once released into the digital world, becomes both intimate and performative. Vara’s narrator types questions into a search bar that no longer behaves like a tool but like a mirror, and I recognized that gesture—the hope that something beyond the self might translate your confusion back to you in clearer terms.
7. I joined goodreads in April 2012. I was 16 years old, and I knew enough about internet safety to not use my full name. In fact, I don’t think I used my real name at all. I called myself Melody. I had recently realized that not all teenage girls read books, and so reading books could be something that was a part of my identity, rather than just something to fill my time.
That was something I had a lot of—time. Because I was homeschooled. I suppose that’s also why I had read so many books. I felt my lack of experiences acutely, so I tried to fill it in using books, which is volumes less embarrassing than making mistakes in real life. I think I wanted to skip the embarrassing part of adolescence, or maybe just of life generally speaking.
That’s probably why even though I started logging my books on goodreads in 2012, it wasn’t until 2015, when I was an English Major, that I started actually writing reviews, that I stopped being quite so afraid of the prospect of looking back on my own thoughts, immortalized for all time.
Or maybe I was finally reading books that I felt were “literary” enough. The first review I wrote was for “The History of Rasselas Prince of Abyssinia." Part of the review read:
“Each of those on the journey leave with different conclusions - each corresponding to their temperament, but we, the readers, are not forced to leave with anything. Instead, it feels as though we are allowed to follow Johnson in his own contemplation of life and what happiness truly means in a life of great sadness.”
I rated it three stars. My own memory of this book, a decade later, was that I was bored out of my mind while reading it, and spent most of the class periods laughing at the cartoons my roommate would draw on her notebooks.
Anyway, I bring all of this up only because of this book, Searches. It’s about (among other things) our relationship with technology, with ourselves, and about the conversations between technology and humanity—figuratively, literally. We construct ourselves from the tools we are given—the empty box in the goodreads review section which asks simply, “What did you think?” and so creates a platform for an identity to unfold.
In Searches, that box is the search bar—another blank field demanding an answer it can’t understand. Vara’s narrator keeps typing into it anyway, asking questions that swell beyond what language or code can hold: about her sister, about death, about meaning. The machine returns fragments, sometimes relevant, sometimes absurd, always partial. Reading it, I thought about how many of my own sentences were written into boxes that promised connection but only looped me back to myself. The novel doesn’t suggest we should stop searching; it only reveals how easily our longing migrates from page to screen, from thought to query. What we call expression might just be a more elaborate way of asking the same question over and over: Is anyone there?
8. I joined goodreads in April 2012. I was 16 years old, and I knew enough about internet safety to not use my full name. In fact, I don’t think I used my real name at all. I called myself Melody. I had recently realized that not all teenage girls read books, and so reading books could be something that was a part of my identity, rather than just something to fill my time.
That was something I had a lot of—time. Because I was homeschooled. I suppose that’s also why I had read so many books. I felt my lack of experiences acutely, so I tried to fill it in using books, which is volumes less embarrassing than making mistakes in real life. I think I wanted to skip the embarrassing part of adolescence, or maybe just of life generally speaking.
That’s probably why even though I started logging my books on goodreads in 2012, it wasn’t until 2015, when I was an English Major, that I started actually writing reviews, that I stopped being quite so afraid of the prospect of looking back on my own thoughts, immortalized for all time.
Or maybe I was finally reading books that I felt were “literary” enough. The first review I wrote was for “The History of Rasselas Prince of Abyssinia." Part of the review read:
“Each of those on the journey leave with different conclusions - each corresponding to their temperament, but we, the readers, are not forced to leave with anything. Instead, it feels as though we are allowed to follow Johnson in his own contemplation of life and what happiness truly means in a life of great sadness.”
I rated it three stars. My own memory of this book, a decade later, was that I was bored out of my mind while reading it, and spent most of the class periods laughing at the cartoons my roommate would draw on her notebooks.
Anyway, I bring all of this up only because of this book, Searches. It’s about (among other things) our relationship with technology, with ourselves, and about the conversations between technology and humanity—figuratively, literally. We construct ourselves from the tools we are given—the empty box in the goodreads review section which asks simply, “What did you think?” and so creates a platform for an identity to unfold.
So it’s a memoir, yes, in the truest sense of the word. Vara hands us the digital artifacts of her life, describes the tech landscape which evolved while most of us were just doing our 9-5s, and holds in her hands the contradictions of being a human using technology. The chapter is called, “What is it like to be alive?”
By the end of Searches, that question—what is it like to be alive?—felt like something I’d been asking since I was sixteen, sitting in front of a desktop computer in the quiet of my parents’ house. My Goodreads account is, in its own way, an archive of that version of me: a girl who thought she could write herself into existence, who mistook articulation for experience. I didn’t have parties or heartbreaks or city lights, but I had sentences, and I believed they could substitute for living. Searches made me see how those early reviews weren’t just about books—they were about proof. Each one said: I’m here, I’m thinking, I exist. Maybe that’s what being sixteen online was, for me—a rehearsal for being alive.
9. I joined goodreads in April 2012. I was 16 years old, and I knew enough about internet safety to not use my full name. In fact, I don’t think I used my real name at all. I called myself Melody. I had recently realized that not all teenage girls read books, and so reading books could be something that was a part of my identity, rather than just something to fill my time.
That was something I had a lot of—time. Because I was homeschooled. I suppose that’s also why I had read so many books. I felt my lack of experiences acutely, so I tried to fill it in using books, which is volumes less embarrassing than making mistakes in real life. I think I wanted to skip the embarrassing part of adolescence, or maybe just of life generally speaking.
That’s probably why even though I started logging my books on goodreads in 2012, it wasn’t until 2015, when I was an English Major, that I started actually writing reviews, that I stopped being quite so afraid of the prospect of looking back on my own thoughts, immortalized for all time.
Or maybe I was finally reading books that I felt were “literary” enough. The first review I wrote was for “The History of Rasselas Prince of Abyssinia."Part of the review read:
“Each of those on the journey leave with different conclusions - each corresponding to their temperament, but we, the readers, are not forced to leave with anything. Instead, it feels as though we are allowed to follow Johnson in his own contemplation of life and what happiness truly means in a life of great sadness.”
I rated it three stars. My own memory of this book, a decade later, was that I was bored out of my mind while reading it, and spent most of the class periods laughing at the cartoons my roommate would draw on her notebooks.
Anyway, I bring all of this up only because of this book, Searches. It’s about (among other things) our relationship with technology, with ourselves, and about the conversations between technology and humanity—figuratively, literally. We construct ourselves from the tools we are given—the empty box in the goodreads review section which asks simply, “What did you think?” and so creates a platform for an identity to unfold.
So it’s a memoir, yes, in the truest sense of the word. Vara hands us the digital artifacts of her life, describes the tech landscape which evolved while most of us were just doing our 9-5s, and holds in her hands the contradictions of being a human using technology. The chapter is called, “What is it like to be alive?”
She captured this for me, at least: the feeling that I love technology & I hate it, both at the same time. I’ve used it to construct myself, to hammer out silly thoughts to send into the void, where it is unread & unuseful, except perhaps as a contribution to AI training data.
Whatever being alive is, Vara suggests that it is these experiences that make us different from AI, that like Rasselas, we spend our lives asking how we can find happiness in a world of great sadness, that we spend our lives writing book reviews describing how we experienced someone else’s imagined experiences, in order to build up for ourselves some idea of self, the life we have or want, in the words we leave behind. To perform identity into existence.
To be human is to be 16 and finding a place yourself on the internet, that is certainly true. Whether or not this is something AI can never have, however, remains to be seen.
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.
December 12, 2025
*3.5 rounded down
“‘𝘏𝘶𝘮𝘢𝘯 𝘭𝘢𝘯𝘨𝘶𝘢𝘨𝘦 𝘶𝘴𝘦 𝘵𝘢𝘬𝘦𝘴 𝘱𝘭𝘢𝘤𝘦 𝘣𝘦𝘵𝘸𝘦𝘦𝘯 𝘪𝘯𝘥𝘪𝘷𝘪𝘥𝘶𝘢𝘭𝘴 𝘸𝘩𝘰 𝘴𝘩𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘮𝘰𝘯 𝘨𝘳𝘰𝘶𝘯�� 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘮𝘶𝘵𝘶𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘺 𝘢𝘸𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘴𝘩𝘢𝘳𝘪𝘯𝘨 (𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘪𝘵𝘴 𝘦𝘹𝘵𝘦𝘯𝘵), 𝘸𝘩𝘰 𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘮𝘶𝘯𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘷𝘦 𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘴, 𝘸𝘩𝘪𝘤𝘩 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘺 𝘶𝘴𝘦 𝘭𝘢𝘯𝘨𝘶𝘢𝘨𝘦 𝘵𝘰 𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘷𝘦𝘺, 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘸𝘩𝘰 𝘮𝘰𝘥𝘦𝘭 𝘦𝘢𝘤𝘩 𝘰𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳’𝘴 𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘢𝘭 𝘴𝘵𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘴 𝘢𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘺 𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘮𝘶𝘯𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘵𝘦,” 𝘉𝘦𝘯𝘥𝘦𝘳 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘎𝘦𝘣𝘳𝘶 𝘸𝘳𝘪𝘵𝘦. “𝘈𝘴 𝘴𝘶𝘤𝘩, 𝘩𝘶𝘮𝘢𝘯 𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘮𝘶𝘯𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘳𝘦𝘭𝘪𝘦𝘴 𝘰𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘱𝘳𝘦𝘵𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘰𝘧 𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘱𝘭𝘪𝘤𝘪𝘵 𝘮𝘦𝘢𝘯𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘷𝘦𝘺𝘦𝘥 𝘣𝘦𝘵𝘸𝘦𝘦𝘯 𝘪𝘯𝘥𝘪𝘷𝘪𝘥𝘶𝘢𝘭𝘴. 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘧𝘢𝘤𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘩𝘶𝘮𝘢𝘯-𝘩𝘶𝘮𝘢𝘯 𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘮𝘶𝘯𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘪𝘴 𝘫𝘰𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘭𝘺 𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘴𝘵𝘳𝘶𝘤𝘵𝘦𝘥 𝘢𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘷𝘪𝘵𝘺 𝘪𝘴 𝘮𝘰𝘴𝘵 𝘤𝘭𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘭𝘺 𝘵𝘳𝘶𝘦 𝘪𝘯 𝘤𝘰-𝘴𝘪𝘵𝘶𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘥 𝘴𝘱𝘰𝘬𝘦𝘯 𝘰𝘳 𝘴𝘪𝘨𝘯𝘦𝘥 𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘮𝘶𝘯𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯, 𝘣𝘶𝘵 𝘸𝘦 𝘶𝘴𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘴𝘢𝘮𝘦 𝘧𝘢𝘤𝘪𝘭𝘪𝘵𝘪𝘦𝘴 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘥𝘶𝘤𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘭𝘢𝘯𝘨𝘶𝘢𝘨𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘪𝘴 𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘯𝘥𝘦𝘥 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘢𝘶𝘥𝘪𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘦𝘴 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘤𝘰-𝘱𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘦𝘯𝘵 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘶𝘴 (𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘥𝘦𝘳𝘴, 𝘭𝘪𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘯𝘦𝘳𝘴, 𝘸𝘢𝘵𝘤𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘴 𝘢𝘵 𝘢 𝘥𝘪𝘴𝘵𝘢𝘯𝘤𝘦 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘪𝘮𝘦 𝘰𝘳 𝘴𝘱𝘢𝘤𝘦) 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘪𝘯 𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘱𝘳𝘦𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘴𝘶𝘤𝘩 𝘭𝘢𝘯𝘨𝘶𝘢𝘨𝘦 𝘸𝘩𝘦𝘯 𝘸𝘦 𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘳 𝘪𝘵. 𝘐𝘵 𝘮𝘶𝘴𝘵 𝘧𝘰𝘭𝘭𝘰𝘸 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘯 𝘸𝘩𝘦𝘯 𝘸𝘦 𝘥𝘰𝘯’𝘵 𝘬𝘯𝘰𝘸 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘱𝘦𝘳𝘴𝘰𝘯 𝘸𝘩𝘰 𝘨𝘦𝘯𝘦𝘳𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘭𝘢𝘯𝘨𝘶𝘢𝘨𝘦 𝘸𝘦 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘱𝘳𝘦𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘨, 𝘸𝘦 𝘣𝘶𝘪𝘭𝘥 𝘢 𝘱𝘢𝘳𝘵𝘪𝘢𝘭 𝘮𝘰𝘥𝘦𝘭 𝘰𝘧 𝘸𝘩𝘰 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘺 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘸𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘮𝘰𝘯 𝘨𝘳𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘥 𝘸𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘬 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘺 𝘴𝘩𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘶𝘴, 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘶𝘴𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘪𝘯 𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘱𝘳𝘦𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘪𝘳 𝘸𝘰𝘳𝘥𝘴.’
..𝘈𝘐 𝘭𝘢𝘯𝘨𝘶𝘢𝘨𝘦 𝘮𝘰𝘥𝘦𝘭𝘴, 𝘣𝘦𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘮𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘱𝘢𝘳𝘳𝘰𝘵𝘴, 𝘥𝘰 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘮𝘶𝘯𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘷𝘦 𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘯𝘵. 𝘛𝘩𝘦𝘺 𝘯𝘦𝘪𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘳𝘦𝘱𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘦𝘯𝘵 𝘢𝘯 𝘪𝘯𝘥𝘪𝘷𝘪𝘥𝘶𝘢𝘭 𝘱𝘦𝘳𝘴𝘱𝘦𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘷𝘦 𝘯𝘰𝘳 𝘮𝘰𝘥𝘦𝘭 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘱𝘦𝘳𝘴𝘱𝘦𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘷𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘢 𝘱𝘰𝘵𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘪𝘢𝘭 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘥𝘦𝘳. 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘭𝘢𝘯𝘨𝘶𝘢𝘨𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘺 𝘦𝘮𝘪𝘵 𝘪𝘴 𝘢𝘭𝘭 𝘴𝘪𝘨𝘯𝘪𝘧𝘪𝘦𝘳, 𝘴𝘵𝘳𝘪𝘱𝘱𝘦𝘥 𝘰𝘧 𝘴𝘪𝘨𝘯𝘪𝘧𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘯𝘤𝘦, 𝘢𝘯𝘺 𝘴𝘪𝘨𝘯𝘪𝘧𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘯𝘤𝘦 𝘸𝘦 𝘱𝘦𝘳𝘤𝘦𝘪𝘷𝘦 𝘪𝘴 𝘢 𝘮𝘪𝘳𝘢𝘨𝘦.”
Though this was released in the spring of this year, so much has changed in AI, in accordance to image/video production with software like Sora and Google’s Nano Banana Pro. And in the race of trying to understand AI and it’s frightening ways of replicating reality, you have to applaud the ways Vara has tried to deal with her past, grief, and the ways AI has tried to aid those aspects of her life to make sense of the immediate present tense.
There’s a lot here. An essay written both in Spanish and English, using AI language tools to help her aim for the purity of language, making meanings actually mean what she is trying to say. Conversations between her and Chat GPT on the construction of this book. Chat GPT also supplementing a folk tale of sorts to aid the grieving of her long-gone sister. Prose pieces written from Google Searches. And more.
It’s an interesting structure that presents itself as tapestry of human understanding. And though it takes Vara a long while to pinpoint the singularity of her voice, you have to applaud the ways a person tries to situate their life, the way they piece it together to make it comprehensible with the times. Making sense of AI and our technological age through memoir, ripped apart and Frankensteined with the thing itself is a complicated biology with language. How do we create a sustainable relationship with language and AI when so many of us are lost to a world with information? With the rate at which information is processed, it’s hard to keep up with how we mediate between living and developing at the rate and which it even exceeds us.
“‘𝘏𝘶𝘮𝘢𝘯 𝘭𝘢𝘯𝘨𝘶𝘢𝘨𝘦 𝘶𝘴𝘦 𝘵𝘢𝘬𝘦𝘴 𝘱𝘭𝘢𝘤𝘦 𝘣𝘦𝘵𝘸𝘦𝘦𝘯 𝘪𝘯𝘥𝘪𝘷𝘪𝘥𝘶𝘢𝘭𝘴 𝘸𝘩𝘰 𝘴𝘩𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘮𝘰𝘯 𝘨𝘳𝘰𝘶𝘯�� 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘮𝘶𝘵𝘶𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘺 𝘢𝘸𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘴𝘩𝘢𝘳𝘪𝘯𝘨 (𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘪𝘵𝘴 𝘦𝘹𝘵𝘦𝘯𝘵), 𝘸𝘩𝘰 𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘮𝘶𝘯𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘷𝘦 𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘴, 𝘸𝘩𝘪𝘤𝘩 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘺 𝘶𝘴𝘦 𝘭𝘢𝘯𝘨𝘶𝘢𝘨𝘦 𝘵𝘰 𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘷𝘦𝘺, 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘸𝘩𝘰 𝘮𝘰𝘥𝘦𝘭 𝘦𝘢𝘤𝘩 𝘰𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳’𝘴 𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘢𝘭 𝘴𝘵𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘴 𝘢𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘺 𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘮𝘶𝘯𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘵𝘦,” 𝘉𝘦𝘯𝘥𝘦𝘳 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘎𝘦𝘣𝘳𝘶 𝘸𝘳𝘪𝘵𝘦. “𝘈𝘴 𝘴𝘶𝘤𝘩, 𝘩𝘶𝘮𝘢𝘯 𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘮𝘶𝘯𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘳𝘦𝘭𝘪𝘦𝘴 𝘰𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘱𝘳𝘦𝘵𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘰𝘧 𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘱𝘭𝘪𝘤𝘪𝘵 𝘮𝘦𝘢𝘯𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘷𝘦𝘺𝘦𝘥 𝘣𝘦𝘵𝘸𝘦𝘦𝘯 𝘪𝘯𝘥𝘪𝘷𝘪𝘥𝘶𝘢𝘭𝘴. 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘧𝘢𝘤𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘩𝘶𝘮𝘢𝘯-𝘩𝘶𝘮𝘢𝘯 𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘮𝘶𝘯𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘪𝘴 𝘫𝘰𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘭𝘺 𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘴𝘵𝘳𝘶𝘤𝘵𝘦𝘥 𝘢𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘷𝘪𝘵𝘺 𝘪𝘴 𝘮𝘰𝘴𝘵 𝘤𝘭𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘭𝘺 𝘵𝘳𝘶𝘦 𝘪𝘯 𝘤𝘰-𝘴𝘪𝘵𝘶𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘥 𝘴𝘱𝘰𝘬𝘦𝘯 𝘰𝘳 𝘴𝘪𝘨𝘯𝘦𝘥 𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘮𝘶𝘯𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯, 𝘣𝘶𝘵 𝘸𝘦 𝘶𝘴𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘴𝘢𝘮𝘦 𝘧𝘢𝘤𝘪𝘭𝘪𝘵𝘪𝘦𝘴 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘥𝘶𝘤𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘭𝘢𝘯𝘨𝘶𝘢𝘨𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘪𝘴 𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘯𝘥𝘦𝘥 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘢𝘶𝘥𝘪𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘦𝘴 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘤𝘰-𝘱𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘦𝘯𝘵 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘶𝘴 (𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘥𝘦𝘳𝘴, 𝘭𝘪𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘯𝘦𝘳𝘴, 𝘸𝘢𝘵𝘤𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘴 𝘢𝘵 𝘢 𝘥𝘪𝘴𝘵𝘢𝘯𝘤𝘦 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘪𝘮𝘦 𝘰𝘳 𝘴𝘱𝘢𝘤𝘦) 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘪𝘯 𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘱𝘳𝘦𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘴𝘶𝘤𝘩 𝘭𝘢𝘯𝘨𝘶𝘢𝘨𝘦 𝘸𝘩𝘦𝘯 𝘸𝘦 𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘳 𝘪𝘵. 𝘐𝘵 𝘮𝘶𝘴𝘵 𝘧𝘰𝘭𝘭𝘰𝘸 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘯 𝘸𝘩𝘦𝘯 𝘸𝘦 𝘥𝘰𝘯’𝘵 𝘬𝘯𝘰𝘸 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘱𝘦𝘳𝘴𝘰𝘯 𝘸𝘩𝘰 𝘨𝘦𝘯𝘦𝘳𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘭𝘢𝘯𝘨𝘶𝘢𝘨𝘦 𝘸𝘦 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘱𝘳𝘦𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘨, 𝘸𝘦 𝘣𝘶𝘪𝘭𝘥 𝘢 𝘱𝘢𝘳𝘵𝘪𝘢𝘭 𝘮𝘰𝘥𝘦𝘭 𝘰𝘧 𝘸𝘩𝘰 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘺 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘸𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘮𝘰𝘯 𝘨𝘳𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘥 𝘸𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘬 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘺 𝘴𝘩𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘶𝘴, 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘶𝘴𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘪𝘯 𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘱𝘳𝘦𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘪𝘳 𝘸𝘰𝘳𝘥𝘴.’
..𝘈𝘐 𝘭𝘢𝘯𝘨𝘶𝘢𝘨𝘦 𝘮𝘰𝘥𝘦𝘭𝘴, 𝘣𝘦𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘮𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘱𝘢𝘳𝘳𝘰𝘵𝘴, 𝘥𝘰 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘮𝘶𝘯𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘷𝘦 𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘯𝘵. 𝘛𝘩𝘦𝘺 𝘯𝘦𝘪𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘳𝘦𝘱𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘦𝘯𝘵 𝘢𝘯 𝘪𝘯𝘥𝘪𝘷𝘪𝘥𝘶𝘢𝘭 𝘱𝘦𝘳𝘴𝘱𝘦𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘷𝘦 𝘯𝘰𝘳 𝘮𝘰𝘥𝘦𝘭 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘱𝘦𝘳𝘴𝘱𝘦𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘷𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘢 𝘱𝘰𝘵𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘪𝘢𝘭 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘥𝘦𝘳. 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘭𝘢𝘯𝘨𝘶𝘢𝘨𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘺 𝘦𝘮𝘪𝘵 𝘪𝘴 𝘢𝘭𝘭 𝘴𝘪𝘨𝘯𝘪𝘧𝘪𝘦𝘳, 𝘴𝘵𝘳𝘪𝘱𝘱𝘦𝘥 𝘰𝘧 𝘴𝘪𝘨𝘯𝘪𝘧𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘯𝘤𝘦, 𝘢𝘯𝘺 𝘴𝘪𝘨𝘯𝘪𝘧𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘯𝘤𝘦 𝘸𝘦 𝘱𝘦𝘳𝘤𝘦𝘪𝘷𝘦 𝘪𝘴 𝘢 𝘮𝘪𝘳𝘢𝘨𝘦.”
Though this was released in the spring of this year, so much has changed in AI, in accordance to image/video production with software like Sora and Google’s Nano Banana Pro. And in the race of trying to understand AI and it’s frightening ways of replicating reality, you have to applaud the ways Vara has tried to deal with her past, grief, and the ways AI has tried to aid those aspects of her life to make sense of the immediate present tense.
There’s a lot here. An essay written both in Spanish and English, using AI language tools to help her aim for the purity of language, making meanings actually mean what she is trying to say. Conversations between her and Chat GPT on the construction of this book. Chat GPT also supplementing a folk tale of sorts to aid the grieving of her long-gone sister. Prose pieces written from Google Searches. And more.
It’s an interesting structure that presents itself as tapestry of human understanding. And though it takes Vara a long while to pinpoint the singularity of her voice, you have to applaud the ways a person tries to situate their life, the way they piece it together to make it comprehensible with the times. Making sense of AI and our technological age through memoir, ripped apart and Frankensteined with the thing itself is a complicated biology with language. How do we create a sustainable relationship with language and AI when so many of us are lost to a world with information? With the rate at which information is processed, it’s hard to keep up with how we mediate between living and developing at the rate and which it even exceeds us.
June 2, 2025
This is a really exciting project—formally experimental a la The Lifespan of a Fact or In the Dream House, which is to say I can feel the Iowa influence (non-derogatory)! It’s rare for CNF to engage with form in a way that feels intrinsic to the project and non gimmicky/non distracting from the subject, but here, it works. I had I think encountered Ghosts on This American Life and now want to revisit in that form— the funny thing is that this book is both really disturbing in its reporting on AI and also makes AI look so absurd at many points, with its deranged plot lines and florid storytelling. I really enjoyed the imagery bits and really, really enjoyed the Amazon reviews. Laughed a lot, and did feel the ways technology makes our humanness stand out.
One thing I noticed, though, is that I just do not like reading things written by AI. I guess it’s partly philosophical—why should I read with intention something with no intention behind it—but also the prose just isn’t good. I can do the short bits, but when it dragged on as an interlocutor I glazed over. I also struggled with the google translate essay—the meta conceit was interesting, but I didn’t want to read either human writing in a language someone’s not fluent in or an ai translation of the same, tho in this case I preferred the AI! Maybe it just hits too close to home as a foreign language learner? But I also feel my emotional reaction to the text was as much the point as the text itself.
One thing I noticed, though, is that I just do not like reading things written by AI. I guess it’s partly philosophical—why should I read with intention something with no intention behind it—but also the prose just isn’t good. I can do the short bits, but when it dragged on as an interlocutor I glazed over. I also struggled with the google translate essay—the meta conceit was interesting, but I didn’t want to read either human writing in a language someone’s not fluent in or an ai translation of the same, tho in this case I preferred the AI! Maybe it just hits too close to home as a foreign language learner? But I also feel my emotional reaction to the text was as much the point as the text itself.
May 27, 2025
What a powerful book, tending to so many questions I have been wrestling with, startled by the ease with which I have allowed AI to enter my own life. Vara makes the convincing and urgent argument that we risk losing the ability to define ourselves with the advance of technological capitalism. She's not a technophobe, and I think that makes her writing richer; she acknowledges it'd be difficult to rid our lives of these technologies entirely, nor, frankly, does it sound like she wants to. Instead, she invites us to interrogate our relationship with the online and the artificial and make of the answers what we will. What does it mean to build a life? To be alive? Surely it's more than being in conversation with a machine.
A book I will be thinking about for weeks, if not longer.
A book I will be thinking about for weeks, if not longer.
January 3, 2026
I was a third of the way into the book when I thought "I hate this" for the first time. And in that same moment I decided I have to finish it to be able to construct a complete opinion. I was halfway through when I thought "I really hate this." The Ghosts essay is brilliant, I love it, I think it's art. But everything in this book that isn't that essay, I had a terrible time with. I had a fifth of the book left when I thought "I don't know that I can get through this." I almost lost my mind with the final chapter.
Vara spends a lot of time being very self aware about her own learned helplessness that predates the existence of ChatGPT. And then making excuses for herself and refusing to challenge herself on any of it. Numerous times I wanted to beg her to grow a goddamn backbone. I related heavily to her friend who doesn't use Amazon and I find Vara exhausting. I struggled greatly with this book. Fucking Harvard people I'm so tired.
Vara spends a lot of time being very self aware about her own learned helplessness that predates the existence of ChatGPT. And then making excuses for herself and refusing to challenge herself on any of it. Numerous times I wanted to beg her to grow a goddamn backbone. I related heavily to her friend who doesn't use Amazon and I find Vara exhausting. I struggled greatly with this book. Fucking Harvard people I'm so tired.
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