I’ve had The Circle by Dave Eggers on my TBR stack for eons and I was interested to see how it has ‘aged’. It was published in 2013 – did Eggers intend it as satire? A cautionary tale? Who knows (although it’s no secret that Eggers isn’t a fan of the way technology and the Internet is infiltrating society), but it is horrifying how many of the ‘futuristic’ and seemingly unlikely technologies and scenarios that Eggers furnishes this future world with, actually now exist.

The future world I speak of is that created by the ‘Circle’, the world’s most powerful internet company. The story focuses on the Circle’s newest recruit, Mae Holland. Mae is thrilled by the opportunity to join the firm; is wooed by their fabulous offices, campus and company benefits; and is amazed by their ‘unified operating system’ (known as ‘Tru-You’) which links users’ emails, social media, banking, purchases, passwords, preferences, and personal records in one online identity –

Your devices knew who you were, and your one identity – the TruYou, unbendable and unmaskable… One button for the rest of your life online.

The purpose of Tru-You was to create a new age of civility and transparency.

TruYou changed the internet, in toto, within a year. Though some sites were resistant at first, and free-internet advocates shouted about the right to be anonymous online, the TruYou wave was tidal and crushed all meaningful opposition. It started with the commerce sites. Why would any non-porn site want anonymous users when they could know exactly who had come through the door? Overnight, all comment boards became civil, all posters held accountable. The trolls, who had more or less overtaken the internet, were driven back into the darkness. And those who wanted or needed to track the movements of consumers online had found their Valhalla…

Sounds great… No, not really when you think about it. The point of this book is to highlight the increasing shift to someone’s right to know and away from someone’s right to privacy. In the world of the Circle, there is no discretion – everything is on the table, and any resistance is met with ‘But what do you have to hide?’

The story charts Mae’s first few months at the Circle, and the ongoing pressure to be engaged in every element of online ‘connectedness’. After a particular interaction with a colleague, Mae’s role at the firm becomes increasingly public, and that is the major plot line.

The thing that was most impressive about this book was the sense of low-level anxiety I had the whole time I was reading. Obviously I don’t want to feel anxious, but when an author can prompt and sustain that feeling in a reader, it says something about the writing. It was passages such the following that made my shoulders tense-up –

She hadn’t visited in six days, and found 118 new notices from that day alone. She decided to plow through, newest to oldest. Most recently, one of her friends from college had posted a message about having the stomach flu, and a long thread followed, with friends making suggestions about remedies, some offering sympathy… Mae liked two of the photos, liked three of the comments, posted her own well wishes, and sent a link to a song, ‘Puking Sally’, that she’d found. That prompted a new thread, 54 notices, about the song and the band that wrote it. One of the friends on the thread said that he knew the bassist in the band, and then looped him into the conversation. The bassist, Damien Ghilotti, was in New Zealand, was a studio engineer now, but was happy to know that ‘Puking Sally’ was still resonating with the flu-ridden. His post thrilled all involved, and another 129 notices appeared, everyone thrilled to hear from the actual bassist from the band, and by the end of the thread, Damien Ghilotti was invited to play at a wedding, if he wanted, or visit Boulder, or Bath, or St. Charles, Illinois, anytime he happened to be passing through, and he would have a place to stay and a home-cooked meal. Upon the mention of St. Charles, someone asked if anyone from there had heard about Tim Jenkins, who was fighting in Afghanistan; they’d seen some mention of a kid from Illinois being shot to death by an Afghan insurgent posing as a police officer. Sixty messages later the respondents had determined that it was a different Tim Jenkins, this one from Rantoul, Illinois… There was relief all around, but soon the thread had been overtaken by a multi-participant debate about the efficacy of that war, U.S. foreign policy in general, whether or not we won Vietnam or Grenada or even WWI, and the ability of the Afghans to self-govern, and the opium trade financing the insurgents, and…

And it goes on and on like this for another few pages. Terrifying. Relentless. Exhausting.

There were many aspects of The Circle that demonstrated Eggers’ skill – it’s wonderfully imaginative (such as the inclusion of a campus aquarium that housed rare fish retrieved from the Marianas Trench!) and the dialogue, all satirical, was consistently and seductively ‘cult-like’ –

“…we want to make sure that you can be a human being here, too. We want this to be a workplace, sure, but it should also be a humanplace. And that means fostering of community. In fact, it must be a community. That’s one of our slogans…Community First. And you’ve seen the signs that say Humans Work Here – I insist on those.”

Two other books came to mind when I was reading The Circle. The first was Anna Wiener’s memoir, Uncanny Valley – it was published years after this novel, but there are obvious parallels between Wiener’s real-life experience and Mae’s fictional one. Both books examine themes of memory, history, privacy, and democracy.

Secondly, Jonathan Haidt’s examination of the anxiety epidemic, The Anxious Generation. Haidt has lots to say about the links between increased anxiety and social media use, but specifically I was reminded of Haidt’s statement that social media has vastly increased the quantity of social connection but has also vastly reduced the quality. As Mae’s ex-boyfriend (who wants nothing to do with TruYou) says –

“It’s not that I’m not social. I’m social enough. But the tools you guys create actually manufacture unnaturally extreme social needs. No one needs the level of contact you’re purveying. It improves nothing. It’s not nourishing…”

Although The Circle was probably 150 pages too long, it was a likely-enough futuristic world to make it really thought-provoking.

3.5/5

“Can you drink this?” The doctor handed Mae the dense green liquid she’d been preparing. “It’s a smoothie.”
Mae drank it down. It was viscous and cold.
“Okay, you just ingested the sensor that will connect to your wrist monitor. It was in that glass.” The doctor punched Mae’s shoulder playfully. “I love doing that.”