How we cite our quotes: (Book.Section.Paragraph)
Quote #7
Mae didn't know enough about antitrust laws to have an off-the-cuff opinion. Was there really no competition out there? The Circle had 90 percent of the search market. Eighty-eight percent of the free-mail market, 92 percent of text servicing. That was, in her perspective, a simple testament to their making and delivering the best product. It seemed insane to punish the company for its efficiency, for its attention to detail. For succeeding. (1.27.5)
No offense, Mae, but there are a lot of things you don't know enough about. On top of antitrust laws, we might add data storage, historical workers' rights movements, the history of American democracy, and the distinctions between private corporations and democratic governments. Not that we've made a list or anything.
Quote #8
"And I would argue that any place in the world where gays are still persecuted, you could instantly achieve great progress if all the gays and lesbians came out publicly at once. Then whoever is persecuting them, and all those who tacitly support this persecution, would realize that to persecute them would mean persecuting at least 10 percent of the population—including their sons, daughters, neighbors and friends—even their own parents. It would be instantly untenable. But the persecution of gays or any minority group is made uniquely possible through secrecy." (1.44.89)
Is it, though? In order to defend his whole "secrets are lies" deal to Mae, Eamon Bailey conveniently ignores the many, many examples of minority groups that have been persecuted when their identities were out in the open. Bailey's folksy ideas may seem profound and wise—Mae certainly buys into them pretty darn quickly—but they leave out a whole lot of nuance and detail. And let's not even get started on the idea of forcibly outing LGBT people. Bailey clearly has no idea what he's talking about.
Quote #9
There were old printers, fax machines, telex devices, letterpresses. The decor, of course, was for show. All the retro machines were nonfunctional. The news gatherers, whose faces were now upon Mae, smiling, saying hello to her and her watchers, were able to do most of their reporting via SeeChange. There were now over a hundred million cameras functional and accessible around the world, making in-person reporting unnecessarily expensive and dangerous, to say nothing of the carbon expenditures. (2.1.61)
Dave Eggers has a background in journalism, so it's not hard to imagine that this aspect of the Circle's approach to knowledge and information would be particularly irksome to him. The thing about journalists—and here we're thinking of strong investigative journalists—is that they're not simply there to record things that happen. They also help us understand what's going on and give us some perspective on what we're seeing. Can the Circle's news gatherers do this from the company newsroom? Pretty doubtful.