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Loading... The Circle (original 2013; edition 2014)by Dave Eggers (Author)
Work InformationThe Circle by Dave Eggers (2013)
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. It's ironic that I learned about this book from a person I know only through social media and that I'm sharing my thoughts about it on social media with people I mostly only know electronically. The Circle is about perfect connectivity and transparency in life via the cloud. It's sounds like Utopia.....or does it? Fast paced, easy to read, and a wee bit frightening. I'm glad technology has not quite reached this level and when it does I wonder if this will make me a wee bit more wary. I have a friend who recently became a supplier to Google, one of the three or four most successful businesses in the young century. One of the mantras of the young behemoth is to do good by its users. Try and square that philosophy with the rigours of a public company and you get a sense of what Dave Eggers' The Circle is all about. Mae Holland, the novel's heroine, is faced with a life working as a techno serf in some backwater, or becoming a cog in one of the most aggressive and sophisticated information firms ever invented. The trade off is that she must give up her privacy and ultimately her independence to rise in the company. Mae doesn't even seem to care that much about her pay scale as much as the number of "likes" she gets from her social media viewers. Mae is convinced (brainwashed?) that the company is ultimately created to do good and in the process reform government and society. How does it accomplish this: complete transparency, crowd sourcing, audio and video surveillance. I'm not a conspiracy theorist. I don't believe Google or even the NSA is out to get me. I sure got a shock last summer, however, when I purchased an ice cream in Portland, Oregon, paid with it by VISA, and immediately got an email confirmation of the purchase without having given the store my email address. Somebody somewhere figured it was ok to send my email address to VISA USA. I don't remember sending it to them. It must have been in one of the user agreements I signed somewhere along the way. Which brings me to my point: the world is changing in ways we can't control or plan for. I regularly advise my customers to take advantage of the revolution posed by cloud computing, but I do so so,what in ignorance of what actually happens up there. Dave Eggers thinks we should care about it. Care about the use and likelihood of abuse of big data. He has a point. And that is what is so disturbing about his book. It is dramatic, well written, and persuasive in the tradition of 1984, Brave New World, and Animal Farm. I certainly recommend it. I don't know what to say about this book. It is a chilling portrayal of a dystopian NOW, where Google/Facebook/your favorite social media company here, takes over. In a big way. Which leads to a tiresome not-really-a-parody that is still TOO MUCH altogether. Sort of glad I read it; wouldn't have wanted to give it much more time. I read this book in about a day and a half and it's certainly thought provoking. However, the main character is so shallow and pliable that it annoyed me to no end. She is supposed to be in her 20s but she struck me as an impulsive teenager. Some other posters have described Eggers' style as "facile" and that's a great description. It's a weird mesh of a YA style but with some decidedly non YA (sexual) content. I do not miss the irony that I am posting my longest review to date regarding this particular novel.
Van alle romans die ik dit jaar las, is De Cirkel van Dave Eggers het meest blijven na-ijlen. Niet omdat het literair het beste boek is, maar vanwege de verontrustende beelden die het oproept, beelden die na de laatste bladzijde niet langzaam wegebben, maar hinderlijk blijven doorspoken. De Cirkel is het 1984 van het internettijdperk genoemd, maar beschrijft een werkelijkheid die veel nabijer lijkt en daardoor dreigender voelt dan Orwells tijdloze boek. Even as satire, The Circle is disappointing as a novel: the plot is too easy, the prose simple, the characters flat and undistinguishable. Due to these same qualities, however, The Circle succeeds as commentary on the era of big data and transparency. The scary part is that the Silicon Valley of The Circle barely seems like a caricature. The easiest comparison of the Circle is to Google — whose Mountain View campus keeps its employees fed, fit, massaged, and, well, kept. The Circle’s mottos and mantras are the same buzzwords already posted on billboards and batted around in cafes and bars. Some will call The Circle a “dystopia,” but there’s no sadistic slave-whipping tyranny on view in this imaginary America: indeed, much energy is expended on world betterment by its earnest denizens. Plagues are not raging, nor is the planet blowing up or even warming noticeably. Instead we are in the green and pleasant land of a satirical utopia for our times, where recycling and organics abound, people keep saying how much they like each another, and the brave new world of virtual sharing and caring breeds monsters. Het onrecht dat in The Circle bestreden wordt, is de expansiedrift van Silicon Valley, zoveel is vanaf de eerste pagina duidelijk. En Eggers gebruikt daarvoor de meest absurde metaforen: drones uitgerust met camera’s die mensen zonder Circle-account achtervolgen en ‘ik wil gewoon vrienden worden’ scanderen, of een transparante haai die een heel aquarium leegeet. Het punt is gemaakt, Dave Eggers. Toch verdient Eggers een like. Zijn versie van de wereld is bewust extreem: hoe het wordt als we allemaal zulke schapen worden als Mae Holland, die kritiekloos Silicon Valley achternalopen. Hij verzint een wereld die – veel maar net niet helemaal – op de onze lijkt, waarin mensen hun vrijheid inleveren, betoverd door quasifilosofische toespraken, moderne bedrijfsvoering en onbeperkt aandacht van een miljoenenpubliek. Eggers vraagt zich niet af welke wereld er is, maar welke kan komen. En zoals in The Circle heeft hij het duidelijk liever niet. This potential dystopia should sound familiar. Books and tweets and blogs are already debating the issues Eggers raises: the tyranny of transparency, personhood defined as perpetual presence in social networks, our strange drive to display ourselves, the voracious information appetites of Google and Facebook, our lives under the constant surveillance of our own government. “The Circle” adds little of substance to the debate. Eggers reframes the discussion as a fable, a tale meant to be instructive. His instructors include a Gang of 40, a Transparent Man, a shadowy figure who may be a hero or a villain, a Wise Man with a secret chamber and a smiling legion of true-believing company employees. The novel has the flavor of a comic book: light, entertaining, undemanding. AwardsDistinctionsNotable Lists
"The Circle is the exhilarating new novel from Dave Eggers, best-selling author of A Hologram for the King, a finalist for the National Book Award. When Mae Holland is hired to work for the Circle, the world's most powerful internet company, she feels she's been given 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. As Mae tours the open-plan office spaces, the towering glass dining facilities, the cozy dorms for those who spend nights at work, she is thrilled with the company's modernity and activity. There are parties that last through the night, there are famous musicians playing on the lawn, there are athletic activities and clubs and brunches, and even an aquarium of rare fish retrieved from the Marianas Trench by the CEO. Mae can't believe her luck, her great fortune to work for the most influential company in the world--even as life beyond the campus grows distant, even as a strange encounter with a colleague leaves her shaken, even as her role at the Circle becomes increasingly public. What begins as the captivating story of one woman's ambition and idealism soon becomes a heart-racing novel of suspense, raising questions about memory, history, privacy, democracy, and the limits of human knowledge"-- No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.6Literature English (North America) American fiction 21st CenturyLC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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Yes, there were some cliché dystopian themes in here, and yes, I too found the main character to be quite flat...
HOWEVER:
I liked this book because of it's ability to keep me thinking. There were several passages in "The Circle" that made me stop reading and ponder my own views on a particular subject or argument, even ones I've already thought about.
This is a 500 page book, and the fact that I finished it in under 3 days really said something to me about how much I was really interested in what would happen.
Also, between watching "Black Mirror" and reading this book, I'm 99% ready to delete every form of social media! :O ( )