Searches
Selfhood in the Digital Age
-
-
5.0 • 2 Ratings
-
-
- $14.99
Publisher Description
From the author of The Immortal King Rao, finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, a personal exploration of how technology companies have both fulfilled and exploited the human desire for understanding and connection
A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: Esquire, Slate, Scientific American, Vox, Electric Literature, Book Riot, Culture Study, Publishers Weekly, Kirkus, Library Journal
"I cannot imagine a better guide through the infuriating, labyrinthine underworld of technology than Vauhini Vara."—Carmen Maria Machado, author of In the Dream House
“Smart, funny, honest.”—The New Yorker • "Seamless blend of personal narrative and systemic critique."—The Atlantic • "Beautifully written and profoundly researched." —Kirkus • "At once genre-defying and gripping.”—The Washington Post
When it was released to the public in November 2022, ChatGPT awakened the world to a secretive project: teaching AI-powered machines to write. Its creators had a sweeping ambition—to build machines that not only could communicate but also could do all kinds of other activities, and 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 herself 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 corporate 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.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this singular inquiry, journalist and novelist Vara (The Immortal King Rao) reflects on humanity's relationship with technology. One entry transcribes an exchange between Vara and ChatGPT in which she prompts the chatbot to explain that it provides answers in first-person plural because doing so encourages users to "let down their guard" while fostering "a sense of identification and loyalty" with its parent company. In "A Great Deal," Vara compiles Amazon reviews she wrote detailing her reasons for buying from the site despite otherwise boycotting the company over its exploitative labor practices, illustrating how monopolistic corporations make it difficult to live without their services. The most poignant selections find pathos in the gap between humanity and AI's superficial approximation of it. For instance, Vara laments that her sister, who died from cancer as a college junior in 2001, left behind relatively few photos of herself compared to the abundance that characterizes the smart phone age. Slick AI-generated images that accompany the text purport to fill the vacuum by depicting her sister, their childhood toys, and scenes from their lives, but the images' uncanniness instead drives home the technology's sterility and lifelessness. The inventive formal experiments incorporate scraps of digital media into scathing critiques of the soulless online environment to which they belong. Readers will be profoundly moved by this remarkable meditation.
