The Circle - Dave Eggers
The job Mae Holland landed was one that millions worldwide would have readily called their dream job. Just 24, Mae departed the stodgy every-day business world forever and started a new career on the Silicon Valley campus occupied by The Circle. Everyone knew The Circle: it was the company that had invented TruYou, and with one keystroke stripped the final vestiges of anonymity from the Internet. Apparently the old cartoon was wrong: on the Internet, people do know you're a dog.
Mae’s started on the corporate ladder’s bottom rung, in Customer Experience. Her job was to answer questions for Circle clients all over the world. After every client interaction, she sent a survey; if the rating didn't hit 100, she sent a follow-up requesting clarification and a re-rate (then another follow-up if the first didn't raise her to perfect). As she became ever more deeply embedded in Circle society, the screen count on her workstation increased: one for work, another for responding to queries by her trainees, a third for the ongoing social interaction with in- and out-Circle Friends, then another to answer surveys to guide Circle clients' marketing strategies; finally nine screens in total. What a multitasker Mae became!
At first Mae had a bit of difficulty adjusting to the culture of The Circle. During her first week she was disciplined for hurting the feelings of a fellow employee: she didn't RSVP to all his invitations to a meeting about a “shared” interest, and didn't show up. Mae quickly learned that the culture of The Circle was mixed complete transparency with constant reinforcement.
| Mae’s personal life needed that reinforcement: her father was seriously ill, and her parents had fallen under the spell of Mercer, her Luddite ex-boyfriend. Mercer, the cad, believed that The Circle was a secret plot to take over the world. Worse, Mae got caught red-handed in a petty crime; thanks to The Circle's latest technological wonder, itsy-bitsy SeeChange cameras ordinary citizens had scattered everywhere around the world so that transparency reached everyone. Everyone. Then The Circle's CEO convinced Mae that her greatest crime had been failing to share her hobby of kayaking with the world. Mortified by her crimes, Mae became the first Circle employee to “go transparent,” broadcasting continuously from a necklace camera to her hundreds of thousands, then millions of followers. As The Circle would say, "Sharing is Caring," and "Privacy is Theft." |
As The Circle’s ambassador to the world, Mae found herself a modern celebrity, one crucial to helping her employee explain its programs and, more important, complete its goals. So what if a few (human) eggs got broken to make such a giant omelet? Mae had already rated it 100% yummy!
Whew. What could you say about The Circle? Well, one thing is that the book’s readers either embrace the point of author Dave Eggers or they simply don’t get it. The division seems to have something to do with the reader social media involvement: addicts of Facebook find it dull; less-"connected" people see within The Circle a mirror of ever-increasing creepiness in modern society. In other words, your reviewer is utterly creeped out by the idea. Then again, I’m less bothered by the NSA's trolling through my cell-phone history than I am by the reams of fine print on the EULA at iTunes; or by the phony people who gush compliments every time their favorite website announces a change.
Eggers has captured a lot of the more insidious aspects of social media, aspects with which he imbues both Mae and her employer. For instance, from her first day on the job Mae learns to pester her clients for 100% ratings and she continue asking them to reconsider or re-rate until she shames them into giving her that perfect score. The level of creepiosity increases with every new revelation: Mae can’t be a good Circler because she doesn't constantly interface with her coworkers. Mae's “PartiRank” (participation ranking) is low because she isn’t commenting, rating, smiling, zinging, and chatting enough. To increase the level of egoboo, she has to stay up ‘til all hours interacting. They tell her she spends too much time off-campus with non-circlers: in other words, her parents. She gets in trouble because she doesn't share everything she does with everybody in the world - feh.
It would be hard for the powers that guide The Circle to find a face better-suited to represent their company than Mae: she’s young, pretty and enthusiastic, Best of all, she has a quality that’s made to order: she's gullible, stupid or both. Mae’s lack of experience, perhaps of critical thinking skills, combines with her other traits to make her the perfect spokesface. And meanwhile, we readers can sit back and watch as she merrily assists in the destruction of civilization as we know it.
And if a reader still can’t figure out the point of The Circle? Eggers embeds an allegorical version of the company: the shark.
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