Most Seattlites, whether or not they work in Big Tech, have a general idea of how tech monoliths like Amazon, Microsoft, etc have transformed the city in the past few decades. Searches provide in-depth background, critical analysis and personal experience on the impact of modern tech advances, as author and tech journalist Vauhini Vara illustrates her experience growing up during the tech boom. The book starts with reminding us that these companies used to be lauded for their progressive values, innovative ideas, and even philanthropy (i.e., Mackenzie Scott). I also didn’t know about Paul Allen (Microsoft co-founder) saving the Seahawks from having to relocate to LA, so that was a neat piece of local history.

I enjoyed the conversational writing style, and the book dives deeply into the origins of the internet and social media to the situation we have today, leaning into the motives of key players like Zuckerberg, Musk, Pichai, Altman, etc. Vara actually starts off describing her first experiences with chat rooms and AOL and moves seamlessly into investigative reporting on the lawsuits and incursions wrought by social media and tech giants, even divulging little known facts, like Zuckerberg naming his kids after Roman emperors, which is simultaneously appalling and typical at the same time.

Each chapter alternates between Vara’s voice and some feature of tech. For instance, when Vara writes about Google, the next chapter lists a bunch of Google searches. When she writes about Amazon and how her friend abstains from shopping on Amazon, the next chapter is filled with her Amazon reviews. Each chapter is also fed into ChatGPT to form a mini summary/analysis at the end. The AI-based chapters were kind of a chore to read, a stark contrast to the sheer brilliance and insight of the author’s original writing. I do appreciate the author’s creativity and experimental take on this stylistic choice; however, it would’ve been more effective if there were less content produced by ChatGPT, maybe or 2 chapters would’ve sufficed.

Special thanks to Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor and NetGalley for providing an eARC in exchange for an honest, independent review.

Review posted to StoryGraph and Goodreads on 3/28/25. Review will be posted to Amazon on release date.

An interesting exploration of technologies and capitalism in our lives both positively and negatively. I personally do not use AI generative applications like Chat GPT but found it interesting to see how these applications built by scrubbing the works of others would interpret works written about them and their founders. I could relate to Vara in this pull between knowing all the things that entities like Meta, Amazon, and Google due to surveil us and yet not being able to stop using their services due to the convenience and reliance we’ve developed with them. Ultimately I found the chapter Ghosts to be the most illuminating surrounding the limitations of AI. It can try to replicate the way humans talk and sound but it ultimately will always add in information that isn’t true and feels unauthentic to the piece. This will be a book that I think about often as I continue to explore my own use with technology in our capitalistic society.

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.

Thanks to Pantheon and Netgalley for this advanced copy!

Searches is a meditation on technology, our sense of self, what we put out into this world, and what we are getting back from it. I sometimes struggle with books that have unique and often changing structures, but Searches pulled me in and I appreciated how each chapter wasn't forced to conform to a style, but was set up to best illustrate the point the author was making. This type of style change can feel gimmicky in the wrong hands, but Vara uses it well and it adds to the reading experience, as well as the theme. On top of that, I don't know that I needed to read another book or article about tech and our lives, but by centering much of this book around Vara's life, and the loss of her sister, Vara humanizes this conversation in a way so few do.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for providing me with an ARC of Searches! Honestly, by the time I got to the end, I had a lot of conflicting opinions about the text. Ultimately, in my opinion, I felt that it was trying to be too many things at once. Part critical analysis, part memoir, part abstract theorizing and rumination. Certain aspects of it worked for me, while others did not. I particularly did not enjoy the author’s handwringing about her use of Amazon and generative AI. The moral grandstanding that we all have to deal with these days, whether from politicians or from friends and family, is already exhausting, and having to read an entire chapter’s worth of Amazon reviews doesn’t make me gain any sympathy for the author. My own qualms aside, though, the use of AI as a source of external commentary on the text of the novel was something I found interesting. The juxtaposition of the author’s writing—often complex and interwoven with thought and emotion in a way AI can hardly replicate, in my opinion—and the AI’s formulaic, repetitive responses was stark, and gave me a lot of food for thought on the ways in which we have been letting AI permeate our lives. I also liked Vara’s interrogation and challenging of ChatGPT throughout the text, particularly as it pertained to tone, portrayals of figures like Sam Altman, and strategies to ingratiate itself with the user. While not a particularly groundbreaking reflection on AI and the role of technology in our lives, Searches was overall an interesting read.

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.

4.5 ⭐️

When I initially read the description, I thought this was going to be hyper fixated on open AI and ChatGPT. But I enjoyed reading both her perspective and the AI from her chapters. Some parts of the reading are hard to get through and a little dull, but I feel as if that was her point. I do think that this is an important conversation to have because she points out a lot of originality and personal touches that are lost through the advancement of AI.

Overall, I really enjoyed reading this book. I was already interested in topics like this, but I really appreciate the perspective of this author.

Thank you NetGalley for sending me this E-ARC for review!!

I get what this book is trying to do. The recent history of tech and the changing relationship we have to social media is valuable. I like how the author moves between the personal and the political and how she uses formal experimentation to get at her points in a different way. I've just become such an AI hater recently, so it's tough for me to comment objectively on the sections between the essays where the book has AI "feedback," summary, and commentary. I think it's really banal and takes away from the humanity and skill of the actual essays.

Vauhini Vara is a formal / essayistic genius. This book is unlike anything else i've ever read--an interrogation of human relationships with digital media, informed and inspired by the forms that the media itself takes, and what such form does to a reader and a writer as a human living in this world. I can definitely see this book being taught in undergraduate courses across many disciplines--a contemporary literature course, an ethics course, a science and technology course, a journalism course. Just fantastic!

Loved this in concept but not in practice, DNFd about halfway in. Personal narrative stuff was more compelling then ai snippets

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 an 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 her as 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.

An exceptional and experimental book that uses AI tools to compose a sometimes slow but more frequently brilliant narrative about what it’s like to live in the Age of AI as a writer. A memoir and a meditation on technology, Vara stumbles a couple of times with concepts that don’t take off (the Spanish chapter), but her detailed conversations with ChatGPT, her observations about her own life in technology, and her discussion of her sister’s tragic passing resonates strongly. I haven’t read the previous collection she references frequently, Ghosts, so I’m not sure if a lot of this ground was covered there, but Searches is an important book that helps us parse being a creative person at a time when creative work is being reimagined with AI technologies. Kudos to her for the Processes section, which will probably find its way into more books in the days ahead.

Vara's observations and musings about AI, the internet and growing up perpetually online resonate with me as an aging millennial, born and raised chronically online. I like Vara's meta analyses, being able to utilize ChatGPT in a way that serves the reader AND the author herself. Clearly Vara doesn't need AI to create a book, but the interplay between the two, the exchange that weaves and binds back and forth-- feels apt and timely. Sometimes, using Uncanny Valley writing is a tell-tale sign of it, but if you teach it right (learning language models!) it seems to be another thing entirely. I enjoyed this book, and feel like Vara played and utilized AI in a way that served her. Would recommend 10/10

I found this book both engaging and informative. The memoir portions of the book were of particular interest to me, especially when the author became contemplative and focused on the metaphysical aspects of human-technology interaction. This would have been a perfect book for me if the metaphysical questions posed by the author were explored at greater length.

Searches is an interesting look at how AI and ChatGPT is being folded in, or forced in in some cases, to life as we know it. As a millennial who grew up on MySpace and Xanga, I appreciate Vara's perspective. It seems the Uncanny Valley is a bit closer to home than we may have realized.

I loved this book; smart, incisive commentary, and a fascinating new voice in artificial intelligence and its impact on creative arts. I found it moving and deeply thoughtful.