

The Circle - Dave Eggers - pnathan
http://www.amazon.com/The-Circle-ebook/dp/B00EGMQIJ0/

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pnathan
An excerpt of this was edited for the NYT about 3 weeks ago and discussed
here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6461893](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6461893)

I picked up the book and read it today. In toto, this book is a satire and
should be read as hyperbole. The precise behavior is not a simulation, nor, in
my opinion, is it a reliable forecast. It is a very thought-provoking read, I
would judge.

However, several themes are clear: the Circle company is a parody of the
Amazon/Google/Apple/Facebook style culture. I draw a linkage of the Circle
uptopian mindset back to the Cyberia culture described in the early 90s.
Succinctly described, it is the belief in technology as _the_ solution to
social problems; sufficiently advanced technology will usher in the (Rapture |
Singularity | Kingdom of Heaven | Ultimate Rain of Marinara Sauce).

Another key theme is the lack of self-reflection and philosophy of the
protagonist: she is not reflective upon _consequences_. A simple idealism
allows her to be led by the nose to the end-game; this is something one sees
time and again in people, and not a particularly new theme.

The protagonist is described in a way that is very similar to the "Millenial"
generation's mindset. This leads to a question: is the current zeitgeist
particularly malleable in certain kinds of ways (E.g., green, social actions,
tweet-for-justice, etc). It's something I hadn't thought about before.
Certainly the theme for most marketing in my region is "Do Good by
(buying|using product X), Feel Good about Doing Good This Way". A sort of
moral marketing, if you will.

Another theme, which perhaps is the most obvious to Hacker News readers, is
the corrosive effect of mass surveillance. I won't spare much time to address
it - _that 's_ an old story here. But as part of that theme, The Circle asks
the quasi-provocative question, "Which data should be shared?", which is
something that is not often publically discussed by startups looking to get
profitability. Aggregation of quantity heaped on quantity has quality all of
its own, as Google has found to its profit with machine learning algorithms.
Sending heaps of our personal data out to different servers may well prove to
have tradeoffs that are problematic as startups with our data are aquired and
datawarehouses of our personal data are formed.

Part of the philosophical question posed by Eggers is the ethics of secrecy
and privacy. Do we have a right to secrecy? Is it most ethical to ensure total
knowledge of all things? Is it selfish to have unshared experiences? These are
questions being discussed at length today in one form or another.

I found that one of the more remarkable and believable characterizations of
the protagonist was the forming groupthink based upon the hypothetical Circle
Corporations Twitter clone tied to the "real world" identities. Dissent was
quickly suppressed in the adulation of the Circle Corp policies. This isn't
entirely realistic, but group think is a known problem on many online forums.

The more literary critic would likely find Eggers writing to be heavy handed,
the romantic interests not particularly plausible, and the scene transitions
jarring. Regardless, I did not read The Circle for its literary merits, but
rather for Eggers' critiques of the society we live in. I found the Circle
satisfactory, and a good reaction to the utopian discussions we find
frequently bandied about in our tech bubble.

