The Circle

by Dave Eggers

the Borrow Room, where anything from bicycles to telescopes to hang gliders were loaned, for free, to anyone on staff,

Why should thousands of employees all leave their dogs at home when they could be brought here, to be around people, and other dogs, and be cared for and not alone?

The era of false identities, identity theft, multiple user names, complicated passwords and payment systems was over.

Bet that's not true

So I snuck in, and I installed cameras in every room. They’re so small she’ll never notice.

Massively against the law in CA

Didn’t the insurance companies realize that the cost of their obfuscation, denial, all the frustration they caused, only made her father’s health worse, and threatened that of her mother? If nothing else, it was inefficient. The time spent denying coverage, arguing, dismissing, thwarting—surely it was more trouble than simply granting her parents access to the right care.

Every time my brain parks the car neatly in the driveway, my mouth drives through the back of the garage.

I know I’m successful if I sell chandeliers. If people order them, then I make them, and they pay me money for them. If they have something to say afterward, they can call me or write me. I mean, all this stuff you’re involved in, it’s all gossip. It’s people talking about each other behind their backs. That’s the vast majority of this social media, all these reviews, all these comments. Your tools have elevated gossip, hearsay and conjecture to the level of valid, mainstream communication.

“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.

But then there’s your absence at most of the weekend and evening events, all of which are of course totally optional.

you’re not doing anything interesting anymore. You’re not seeing anything, saying anything. The weird paradox is that you think you’re at the center of things, and that makes your opinions more valuable, but you yourself are becoming less vibrant. I bet you haven’t done anything offscreen in months.

“It’s like when we see two people whispering,” Mae said. “We worry, we feel insecure, we make up terrible things they might be saying. We assume it’s about us and that it’s catastrophic.” “When they’re probably asking where the bathroom is.”

they were modeling the elimination of physical money—the trackability of internet currency would eliminate huge swaths of crime overnight—and