????The Circle公司初期的行事方式還是比較有可信度的，不過后來幻想的意味很快越來越濃烈。梅的第一份工作是客戶服務，主要是回答用戶的問題，然后獲得用戶的滿意度評分。梅的第一個客戶給她打了99分，但是她的上級對她說：“99分很不錯了，但我不禁要想，為什么不是100分呢？大多數公司可能會說，滿分100分的話，99分可以說很高了。但是在The Circle公司，這丟掉的1分讓我們很不舒服。”這番激昂的演說很有意思，而且讓人很容易想象它是出自硅谷某個創新工廠的高管口中。沒過多久，梅參加了公司所謂的“檢查浮游生物時間”。梅的朋友安妮（安妮是把梅招進公司的人，但隨著梅的平步青云，她在公司很快受到了冷落。）這樣解釋道：“你知道，很多小的創業公司希望像咱們公司這樣的大鯨魚能夠吃掉他們。每個星期，我們都和這些家伙——也就是想成為像泰一樣的大老板的人開一系列會議，他們則想方設法說服我們收購他們。”梅在這些會議中會一直在脖子上戴著一個攝像頭，她在會上所看到的一切都會被轉播給幾百萬人，這就是The Circle公司的“透明”路線。且不說讓公眾了解企業收購情況的做法無疑是很荒謬的，我們不妨想象一下，如果雅虎（Yahoo）CEO梅莉沙?梅耶爾在收購Tumblr之前也拍了這么一支視頻，還把它發到了Twitter上會是什么樣子。但讀到此處，讀者會發現，在梅和The Circle公司其他人的推動下，全世界從政治圈開始，都走起了“透明”路線。（梅只有上廁所的時候才能把攝像頭關掉，但時間僅限兩分鐘，以免讓她的觀眾們擔心。）

????書中也有為數不多的幾處搞笑情節。比如有一次，梅和公司里一個追求他的男同事睡了。這哥們兒有早泄的毛病，但是事后總是請（或者說要求）梅給他的床上表現打分。為了讓他感覺良好，梅每次都給他打100分，他也把分數看得極重。像這位快槍手一樣的技術宅大概就是艾格斯想象中科技公司技術員的樣子。或許與其說是搞笑，倒不如說是可悲。

????不管怎樣，某家科技公司有可能攫取過大的權力和社會影響這個想法絕對是一個合理的擔憂。像喬納森?弗倫岑一樣，艾格斯也很擔心這一點。艾格斯自己不上Twitter，在Facebook上也沒有主頁，但是在這本小說中，全世界人民都很快地愛上了The Circle公司的“透明”概念。人們牢牢地坐在電腦屏幕前，目不轉睛地盯著梅一整天的工作，不禁令人遐想，這故事莫非是發生在另一個星球上。艾格斯對社交媒體的諷刺有一部分是正確的（The Circle公司的人都非常喜歡在社交媒體上點“贊”，經常在狀態更新中發笑臉或皺眉的表情），不過在他的書中，美國人民似乎除了上網就不需要過日子了。雖然社交媒體的確非常普及，但是老百姓其實并不像艾格斯筆下那樣好騙。

????書中唯一理性的聲音來自梅的父母和他的前男友默瑟。默瑟是一個戶外運動愛好者，工作是用鹿角做吊燈。隨著梅的職務越來越高，她很快開始瞧不起土里土氣的父母。由于默瑟和她的父母走得很近，每次梅回家看父母的時候，她也會順便看看默瑟。默瑟很反感梅在The Circle公司的工作。有一次吃飯的時候，他對梅說：“梅，你知道我是怎么想的嗎？我想，你大概覺得坐在桌子后頭，發一個皺眉或笑臉的表情，你就覺得你的生活也挺精彩的。你對事情評論一番，就代替了親手去做這些事。你看了看尼泊爾的照片，發一個笑臉的表情，就覺得好像跟自己去了那里一樣……梅，你知道你的生活已經變得多無聊了嗎？”這番話說得都是事實，而且顯然是替我們這些讀者說的。不過他的口氣聽起來很像是一個愛抱怨的老頭在抱怨現代科技。梅很快和默瑟分手了，而這本書也從這里開始變得無聊起來。梅的父母也不再給她提出任何針對公司的警告，因為他們已經享受上了公司的醫保服務。之后默瑟成了唯一一個敢提反對意見的人。一次他給梅寫了一封信表達了善意的關心，但她當著幾百萬“觀眾”的面把這封信大聲念了出來。我們發現，艾格斯并沒有故意要寫一部具有可信性的諷刺作品的意思（如果是故意諷刺也倒好了，但并不是這樣——這本書很少搞笑），因為人們很快一邊倒地嘲笑默瑟關于The Circle公司侵犯人隱私的警告。如果有人站出來為默瑟說句話，甚至說上一句“其實他說得也挺有道理的”，可能會顯得更有可信性，但艾格斯并沒有這樣寫。在這個虛擬的社會中，整個社會都像梅一樣，茫然無視“老大哥”對隱私的侵犯。

????后來書中寫道，由于不堪其擾，梅只想遠離世事，不受打擾地住在森林里，因此梅開始動用The Circle公司的移動攝像頭尋找默瑟。但因為她干得太過火，最終發生了非常不好的事。但此時本書的情節已經發展得過于牽強，書中的人們也變得不像我們所知道的任何人類，你可能也將知道接下來會發生什么事。艾格斯并沒有給出令人意外或糾結的結尾，而是選擇了大家都期待的結局。（財富中文網）

????譯者：樸成奎?

????Early explanations of how they do things at The Circle are believable until they spiral quickly into fantasy. Mae's first gig is in customer service, responding to user queries and getting back a satisfaction rating. When her first customer gives Mae a 99, her superior tells her: "Ninety-nine is good. But I can't help wondering why it wasn't a 100… Now, most companies would say, Wow, 99 out of 100 points, that's nearly perfect. And I say, exactly: it's nearly perfect, sure. But at the Circle, that missing point nags at us." That little rant is funny and one can indeed imagine it coming from the mouth of some zealous exec at a Silicon Valley innovation factory. But soon enough, Mae attends "plankton-inspection time," which her friend Annie (who recruits Mae to The Circle and is swiftly kicked aside as Mae scrambles up its ladder) explains this way: "You know, little startups hoping the big whale—that's us—will find them tasty enough to eat. Once a week we take a series of meetings with these guys, Ty-wannabes, and they try to convince us that we need to acquire them." That series of pitches are broadcast to millions of people once Mae "goes transparent" with a camera around her neck that allows anyone to see everything she sees. Nevermind how ludicrous it is to picture a company letting the public watch it deliberate acquisitions (can you imagine if Yahoo (YHOO) CEO Marissa Mayer created a Vine video, and shared it on Twitter, of her early meetings with David Karp before buying Tumblr?). By now the reader has checked out anyway, as Mae and the rest of The Circle rapidly convinces people all over the world, beginning with politicians, to "go transparent" (Mae gets to turn her camera off when she's in the bathroom, but only for two minutes, lest her watchers worry).

????In one of the book's rare funny moments, Mae sleeps with a guy at The Circle who has pursued her. He is a premature ejaculator but nonetheless he asks her—demands, in fact—to "rate him" based on his sexual performance. She keeps giving him 100s to make him feel good. The rating is really important to him. These are the kinds of people Eggers imagines actually occupy the desks of our hallowed tech companies. Maybe it's more upsetting than funny.

????Regardless, the idea that one of our biggest tech companies could gain too much power and influence is certainly a legitimate fear—like Jonathan Franzen, Eggers, it seems reasonable to extrapolate, is indeed afraid; he does not tweet or keep up a Facebook author page—but inThe Circle, the rest of the world outside the company so quickly embraces "transparency" and sits glued to their screens watching Mae's work day that you begin to wonder if the novel is meant to take place on a different planet. Eggers's sendup of social media is partially dead-on (people at The Circle rampantly send "zings" and give a "smile" or "frown" to status updates) but in his depiction no one in America seems to have any life at all outside the computer. The proliferation of social media notwithstanding, human beings simply aren't as gullible as he makes them out to be.

????The sole voices of reason in the novel are Mae's analog parents and her ex- boyfriend, Mercer, an outdoorsman type who makes chandeliers out of antlers. Whenever she visits her folksy parents, whom she quickly comes to look down on, she also sees Mercer, who has become close with her parents and who is wary of her work at The Circle. "You know what I think, Mae?" he tells her at one family meal. "I think you think that sitting at your desk, frowning and smiling somehow makes you think you're actually living some fascinating life. You comment on things, and that substitutes for doing them. You look at pictures of Nepal, push a smile button, and you think that's the same as going there… Mae, do you realize how incredibly boring you've become?" All of that is true, and Mercer is clearly meant to stand in for us, the reasonable reader. But he also sounds too much like an angry old man complaining about technology to be a fair surrogate for sanity. Mae swiftly writes him off, and this is where the book begins to get boring. Mae's parents are unable to warn her against The Circle because they're benefitting from its healthcare program, so Mercer is left to the task alone. When he writes Mae a letter further explaining his kind concerns, she reads that letter aloud to her millions of "watchers" and we realize Eggers has no intention of creating a believable satire (which would be fine if it were meant to be an intentionally over-the-top parody, but it isn't that—the book is rarely funny) because the people tuned in to Mae unhesitatingly and unanimously mock Mercer for suggesting caution about The Circle's encouraged obliteration of privacy. Eggers would do well to show a few of them piping up in his defense, or even one chorus of, "well, he makes some fair points…" but there is none. The fictional society is as blindly accepting of Big Brother as Mae.

????By the point in the book when millions of people tune in to cheer Mae on as she uses The Circle's mobile cameras to pursue Mercer (for wanting only to live alone, unbothered in the woods) so relentlessly that, inevitably, something awful happens, the plot has grown so far-fetched, and the people so far gone from any semblance of humans we know, that you're well aware of what's coming. And Eggers doesn't surprise or give a twist: instead, he chooses the exact ending we expect.