Searches: Selfhood in the Digital Age

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. Agent: Susan Golomb, Writers House. (Apr.)

Correction: A previous version of this review stated that Vara's sister died in 2000. She died in 2001.