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Loading... The Circleby Dave Eggers
  
Best Dystopias (51) » 12 more Top Five Books of 2013 (222) Top Five Books of 2015 (689) To Read (163) Read in 2016 (21) Our digital age (4) Eggers comments on social circles in general was as interesting or more so than the general thread of current day digital "social networking." I wish a bit of the middle could have been condensed, edited out, chopped about 100 pages, or some-such, but I like Eggers fiction writing (The Wild Things, YSKOV, HWOSG); this dipped just slightly below my expectations and I looked forward to seeing Eggers tie off the story. (  ) bikesandbooks | Jan 29, 2017 |  About a month or so ago, I saw a trailer for an Emma Watson film called The Circle and it caught my eye. I immediately did a search to see if it was a book. Ta-da! And the library had a copy, so win-win. I actually chose the audio-book format, thinking that it would probably translate well and it does. In fact, while I was listening to certain parts I found myself thinking, I wonder what this looks like in print? This book scared me. I believe the implementation of technology in this story can come to be reality. Completely. I see it as a modern cautionary tale. I was reluctant to log onto FaceBook for days because I kept thinking of The Circle. You know those books that you forget about soon after finishing them? That won't be the case with this one. (  ) VictoriaPL | Jan 25, 2017 | I think this book got four stars from me because it freaked the crud out of me. It steps forward just a little in time and imagines the next step in social media - a conglomerate company that subsumes Facebook, Twitter, Google, et al, and envisions bringing the whole world together into one neat, centralized system. I admit - since I started reading this book, I felt funny about "liking" things on FB. This is a good read. Not quite as deep as it could have been, with characters more shallowly drawn than I would have liked (unless... maybe that's on purpose? I don't think so?), but the ideas in here are really good. Eggers does a really good job of making The Circle's goals seem so good, so right... Yikes. I admit I lost sleep with this one. It invaded my dreams. Maybe it's time to move north? Time will tell. (  ) ThePortPorts | Jan 17, 2017 | Holy frack, that was scary. In the not too distant future, the Circle has replaced Google, Facebook, and Amazon to become the dominant information technology of the Internet. As the Circle becomes the central driver of content, the engine for 90% of searches on the World Wide Web, and the holder of patents for a whole host of future internet-based technologies that link email, searches, payment systems, and more, the world shrinks, transparency grows, and Utopia appears in reach. Mae Holland is so fortunate as to have found a job at the burgeoning company, and she soon becomes a true believer in the company's vision for a new age of kindness and civility. As Mae leaps the corporate ladder from customer service rep to become a spokesperson for the "transparent" future the company is building, it becomes apparent that all may not be as it seems. As I listened to the last chapter of Dave Eggers' cautionary tale, I couldn't help but feel like I was watching the replay of a video of a really bad car accident and you see it coming, but you know the people in the accident don't, but the accident has already happened, and there's nothing you can do. But you cringe anyway, because: it's coming, and it's going to be bad. Eggers is brilliant in his observations of what makes social media and the world wide web addictive, especially to the narcissist in each of us, and his powers of describing it is at times equal parts creepy and dull. It is a world so similar to ours and described in such excruciating detail that it is its very banality that makes it so horrifying. Let me be clear (semi-spoiler alert): This is not a happy story, and the characters that populate its pages are morally gray, not unlike how many of us seem. Yet, Eggers manages to create sympathy for each, giving them pathos that allows sympathy, even while each makes choices that will inevitably carry them to the terrible car accident that apparently is approaching. I don't know if Eggers believes in the terrible inevitability of his conclusions, but it is a depressing thought. In many ways, it is this overshadowing sense that the conclusion is inevitable that makes a number of the leaps--plot points--a little difficult to believe. The world is stumbling towards this tremendous Utopia where transparency is unlimited, where secrets cannot exist. In this sense, Eggers seems to write with an ear towards how George Orwell or Aldous Huxley might describe the world we are moving into if they had seen and known the capabilities of the internet. Here are the utopian mottos, the guiding hand of a "benign" Big Brother, the absolute rule of the masses in the guise of democracy, and the sense that it is all for a better, more safe and civil society. It's scary and it's believable if you can allow a few leaps in the process. And yet, if The Circle is not exactly how it happens, Eggers doesn't do a bad job speculating how it might happen. I only gave three stars because while I felt the power of Eggers argument, I never quite lost myself in the story, struggled to empathize or make the logical leaps that Mae needed to make to lead us down the garden path. I had to wonder at times: could anyone be so stupid, vapid, or naive as to make the choices she makes? Perhaps I am underestimating the vacuous power of the approval of total strangers as conveyed over social media? Perhaps Mae is a conglomeration of a number of individuals collected as one? I don't know. It's almost a four, but Eggers is brilliant in his insights and description, as well as his plotting and even metaphorical use of the natural world, his characters remain prosaic...but maybe that's the point? ( ) publiusdb | Jan 10, 2017 | A brilliant retelling of Brave New World for the digital age, complete with requisite savage and cheerleader characters and electronic wristlets as the new Malthusian belts. Warning: may cause readers to ditch their digital footprints, take to the woods and live off the grid. ( ) DellaWanna | Dec 20, 2016 |
 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.
Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 0385351399, Hardcover)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. (retrieved from Amazon Thu, 12 Mar 2015 18:20:14 -0400) "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"--… (more) |
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