In the Shadow of Silicon Valley

Eggers, a longtime San Franciscan, said: “When I read Boots’s script, I’d just published ‘The Circle’ ” — a 2013 dystopian novel set in Silicon Valley — “and it struck me that we were both picking up on changes we’ve seen in the Bay Area. There’s this strangely sinister cast to life here sometimes, where it’s still idyllic and free and open but als... See more

The shining city on a hill was supposed to replace remote big government with a community of energetic and compassionate citizens, all engaged in a project of national renewal. But nothing held the city together. It was hollow at the center, a collection of individuals all wanting more. Free America measured civic health by gross domestic product.

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But today things are different. The open world of the Entrepreneurial Age is dominated by networks of individuals equipped with ever more powerful computing devices. Not only do people travel more, they’re also more connected with one another across the borders that still divide the physical world. It doesn’t mean that local communities or nation s

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would bend to them. I assumed they had people to impress, parents to please, siblings to rival, rivals to beat. I assumed their true desires were relatable: community, or intimacy, to simply be loved and understood. I knew that building systems, and getting them to work, was its own deep satisfaction—but I assumed everyone wanted more. I was always

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