I make absolutely no secret that I am a user of the Internet who is fully comfortable sharing information, interacting with others — even complete strangers — without a second thought.  For some people, that’s completely normal, while others are incredibly guarded about their digital lives.  That’s okay too.

In his book “The Circle,” Dave Eggers presents a story that I’m going to dub a reductio ad absurdum argument for the Internet.  That’s where you take an idea, and to expose it’s shortcomings, you argue it to its farthest conclusions and comment on that result.

“The Circle” follows a young woman named Mae who gets a job at the hottest tech company in Silicon Valley (called The Circle), one that has basically brought together every big social media platform under one roof. 

She’s a tech neophyte when she arrives on the kind of campus we’ve come to expect from these companies.  She has email and a few social media accounts, but she doesn’t use them much.  As she gets settled into her job in customer service, she gets gentle reminders from her bosses that she is supposed to be using the products a certain amount.

At one point, she gets called in for a talk that definitely reminded me of Jennifer Aniston’s character being scolded for not having enough “flair” in “Office Space.”  People were upset with Mae for not commenting on or liking their posts, and for ignoring invitations to the nearly constant events on campus.

“I asked you to come in just to, well, to square that with your social behavior here, and the message it’s sending,” her boss says.

Mae vows to do better, and throws herself into a flurry of social media activity.  This is the beginning of the kind of digital creep we’ve all experienced going from the same zero point to wherever we are now.  Think about the times you flip over to Facebook for the first time in a day or two and feel like you’ve missed a mountain of stuff and have to catch up.  It’s not important in the least that you do, but I know I’m not alone in feeling the pull to try to look at it all.

That creep, the acceptance of a new level of connectedness, is pervasive in the book.  It’s Mae’s entire journey as she ascends through the ranks of the company, which gives its employees scores on a wide variety of their activities and an overall ranking based on how much they participate.  She arrived unaffected by social media, but quickly becomes obsessed.

The Circle was founded with good intentions, things like eliminating anonymous online comments to promote more civility and bringing together your million different social media accounts into one spot that would be easier to manage.  The key thing about the book is that it is rooted in reality.  We’ve seen a wave recently of companies ditching anonymous comments, like Google requiring Google+ accounts on YouTube and HuffingtonPost making people sign in with Facebook.  It’s a great idea in itself, but what Eggers does is take those pieces and build on them, showing that when Mae accepts each new thing as normal, they just add a higher level of connectedness and another after that.

The company pioneers things like a series of small cameras placed all over the world.  The goal espoused by one of the bosses is for every bit of information to be available to everyone at all times.  At a company event, the words “All that happens must be known” are shown on a screen.

That evolves to people, including Mae, wearing cameras around their necks every waking hour, streaming their entire lives over the Internet.  Mae talks about certain benefits, like giving up soda knowing that people are watching and being influenced by her actions.  Politicians flock to use the system to show they are not corrupt.

As one of the bosses puts it, “Who would do something unethical or immoral or illegal if they were being watched.”

But as with every other move in the book, what has you nodding in agreement one second has you questioning the other side the next.  Sure, people would be less likely to commit a crime in a world completely saturated with cameras.  But at what point are we giving up our ability to be humans?  I’m not saying I need to carjack someone, but isn’t your ethics a big part of who you are?  Is not robbing someone because there’s a camera fake ethics?

And what about private conversations?  At one point, Mae takes part in a presentation that utilizes the phrase “privacy is theft.”  Should we not be able to have personal secrets, secrets among friends, private moments that are ours?

A few years ago I did a post with audio tapes that my mom’s family sent back and forth to her dad while he was deployed overseas in the army.  In one of them, my grandmother is talking directly to my grandfather (through the tape) and says that while she loves their children and their life as a family, she loves the world they inhabit just as the two of them.

Whether we think about it or not, we have those private lives with a lot of people.  We have moments just being with each other that would be unquestionably altered by a camera around our necks and someone out there in the world somewhere watching on their laptop.  Think about all the things you would never ever say to certain people, either because you don’t want to be seen in that level of vulnerability, or because you fear embarrassment.  Imagine a website where you could go to just watch person after person ask someone on a date and get shot down, or another where you could see every disastrous job interview.

We need to be able to fail at things, to show ourselves to both the people who matter to us and to random people we meet without the fear of having our natural human emotions and experiences turned against us, or even witnessed by others.

Mae’s obsession takes on a new dimension after the company develops a system for full, direct democracy, and tests it out by asking everyone at the company if Mae is awesome.  Hundreds say no.  She is completely unraveled wondering who and why.  Remember all those rumors you’ve heard over the years about Facebook potentially adding a “dislike” button?  Maybe there’s a good reason for that not happening.  While Facebook does portray a certain “best of” for people’s lives that inevitably makes us think everyone else is happier and more successful than we are, I’m okay with people saying why they dislike something in a comment or just ignoring it.  I could be wrong about that.

Eggers uses Mae’s ex-boyfriend Mercer as the counter to her acceptance.  He wants no part of The Circle or any of its services.  So, while Mae is saying things like, “I want to be seen.  I want proof I existed,” Mercer decries what he calls a “sickness” for people like her to need not only their own data, but his and everyone else’s too.

“Like everything else you guys are pushing, it sounds perfect, sounds progressive,” he says, “but it carries with it more control, more central tracking of everything we do.” 

I’ve preached my love of Eggers’ work a lot over the years, but other than “A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius” this is his best.  I’ve barely scratched the surface in this ridiculously long post.  If you think at all about the way our digital lives are now and will progress and all the issues and implications, you have to read it.  It will make you think a lot about how you interact not only with the online world, but the vast expanse of humanity that is not wired.