The Circle

by Dave Eggers

In this, his latest, book Dave Eggers paints a picture of a future that feels so near one can almost touch it.

The protagonist is Mae who, thanks to her friend Annie, has found a coveted job at The Circle, a corporation that is like an exaggeration of Google/Facebook/Twitter and any other major online presence rolled into one. She starts her job with one computer screen on which she answers customer questions followed by immediate numbers on customer satisfaction. Soon, a second screen gets added. This one to stay in contact with other people within the corporation. Then a third. A fourth. A fifth.

What The Circle stands for, most prominently, is total transparency. Online presences are no longer anonymous. The assumption is that people behave better when they know they are acting under their real names. This evolves into cameras being placed all over. First, to monitor precarious political situation and to offer stunning visuals for people that may be unable to venture out into the world themselves for some reason or other. But then this turns into a means to watch everyone at anytime and anywhere. Because you monitor yourself when everyone sees you.

After a brush with law enforcement and Mae's realization that she would not have gotten in trouble had she known that a number of cameras were watching her, Mae joins the ever growing ranks of people that have gone "transparent", meaning that she starts wearing a camera around her neck so that people can follow her every move. This practice has become particularly popular with politicians, trying to prove they have nothing to hide from their voters.

Increasingly, she found it difficult to be off-campus anyway. There were homeless people, and there were the attendant and assaulting smells, and there were machines that didn't work, and floors and seats that had not been cleaned, and there was, everywhere, the chaos of an orderless world. [...] Walking through San Francisco, or Oakland, or San Jose, or any city really, seemed more and more like a Third World experience, with unnecessary filth, and unnecessary strife and unnecessary errors and inefficiencies - on any city block, a thousand problems correctible through simple enough algorithms and the application of available technology and willing members of the digital community. She left her camera on.

The corporation grows at a remarkable speed and encorporates more and more aspects of daily life, with Mae becoming something of a poster child for the movement. Her initial unease with The Circle's expectancy that she participate in every social event on campus soon falls away and she gradually becomes convinced that her employer's ideas will improve the world - after all, SECRETS ARE LIES.

All this, of course leads to a small group of people opposing and refusing The Circle taking over their lives, but they are vastly outnumbered. Mae gradually alienates her own parents, who are simpy not comfortable with being watched 24/7, and her former boyfriend Mercer, who eventually goes off grid. She also becomes involved with a mysterious stranger, whose alliances are not quite clear to her. (I guessed correctly as to who this guy is.)

Eventually, her own doings lead to a tragedy, but everyone involved convince themselves that they did no wrong whatsoever. They venture on with their blinders towards they plane of a totalitarian system of everyone having access to all knowledge. But - how much information is too much?

Really, really great book.

"Now we're all God. Every one of us will soon be able to see, and cast judgment upon, every other. We'll see what He sees. We'll articulate His judgment. We'll channel His wrath and deliver His forgiveness. On a constant and global level. All religion has been waiting for this, when every human is a direct and immediate messenger of God's will. Do you see what I'm saying?"

9/10