"I wanted to make the case that here is a system that we all created together that allows for our exploitation through the prism of services that we actually do get some benefit from. Everybody involved in the system gets some benefit from it - the CEOs of these companies and also us as users. I wanted to investigate that complicity" - Vauhini Vara, author, Searches: Selfhood in the Digital Age talks to Manjula Narayan about her book that uses her Google searches dating back to the early aughts, Amazon reviews, long conversations with AI, memories of her sister who died of cancer in her teens and insights gleaned during her years as a technology journalist to understand how tech has become so enmeshed in our lives, and grasp the sinister aspects of that while also understanding that no single trajectory is inevitable. 

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