Instagram, Twitter and TikTok can monopolize all of your time, driven by what the novelist Jennifer Egan calls humankind’s “ongoing hunger for authenticity.” But to Egan, social media is not a winning strategy for discovering what’s real or true: “Looking to the internet for authentic experience is just inherently a loser,” she says. The digital world, after all, offers only an “illusion of authenticity.”
In her newest novel, “The Candy House” — set in the same universe as her Pulitzer Prize-winning “A Visit From the Goon Squad” — Egan paints a picture of a world where the search for authenticity becomes so ubiquitous that people can choose to upload their memories — and entire consciousnesses — to a collective archive, and then share them for the world to see.
In this conversation, Kara Swisher and Egan discuss how far Silicon Valley is from accessing our consciousnesses and introducing this kind of dystopian technology. They debate how social media has changed the world and whether there is still room for optimism. And Kara tries to decipher which tech founder, if any, inspired Egan’s protagonist, whom Kara describes as Mark Zuckerberg with “the soul of Steve Jobs.” (Egan, for the record, denies all comparisons.)
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
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Sarah Cooper Is Tired of Being Donald Trump
She’s Bursting Big Tech’s Bubble
Hillary Clinton Says It’s Different This Time
Should You Choose Your Baby’s Eye Color?
The Election Isn’t Doomed … Yet
Can Big Tech Make Sure That 2020 Is Not 2016?
Planned Parenthood’s Plan for Amy Coney Barrett
Killer Mike Says He Has a Choice to Make
The Man Behind America’s Race for a Vaccine
Alexander Vindman Knew Trump Would End His Career
Elon Musk: ‘A.I. Doesn’t Need to Hate Us to Destroy Us’
Gavin Newsom: ‘We Decided to Pull the Band-Aid Off’
Nancy Pelosi: ‘If The Election Were Held Today, We Would Win It All’
Coming Soon: Sway
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