When Mae Holland is hired by the internet super-company the Circle, she thinks they had given her the opportunity of a lifetime. The Circle, run out of a sprawling California campus, links users’ personal emails, social media, banking, and purchasing with their universal operating system, resulting in one online identity and a new age of civility and transparency. It is how many of us understand the most popular Silicon Valley firms: young people who work hard and play hard in an organization that meets their every need. Mae discovers Circle demand much from their employees, but it provides more than she (and many of us) can even imagine.
I thought this book was very slow getting started as we follow Mae through her orientation and first weeks with the Circle. She seems to accept with no concern the many ways the Circle gains more and more control of her life and the lives of all of those using their service. Every new Circle product is offered as life-enhancing, providing more information, more safety, more transparency with minimal concerns about privacy and none about the ways these capabilities could be abused.
Eggers does an excellent joy of pulling us into Mae’s life and justifying each decision she makes to become more and more enmeshed in the maze of Circle control. Any time she expresses even the most timid of concerns, she is overwhelmed by the benevolence of more powerful figures who have befriended her.
In my recent book, The S.A.M. (Sentient Adaptive Matrix) the artificial intelligence questions the messiness of human society and offers to “fix” that problem, giving humanity a more orderly environment. In The Circle we can see how humans themselves using known technology can, one small step at a time, create a more well-regulated society by removing all the anti-social behaviors. The question this raises is not only whether we want to live under the universal surveillance offered by the Circle but also whether we can even recognize and prevent such a development until it is too late.
As pundits and politicians consider a future after our current quarantine, it is especially striking to me that many are discussing forms of monitoring bordering on that provided by the Circle. What if a vaccine turns out to be a false dream or not as effective as hoped? What if those who have been infected don’t achieve the long-lasting immunity we anticipate? What if all of our efforts slow down but don’t completely eradicate this virus? What are we as a society willing to give up to live in a post-pandemic world?
The Circle is available today from the Prescott Public Library system as an e-book. When the library reopens, it will also be available in regular print, and audio on CD formats. Amazon has it as a Kindle book, audio through Audio.com, hardcover and audio on CD.
What are we as a society willing to give up to live in a more orderly and safer world?
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