What genre does a story like this fall into? On first glance, it clearly belongs on the sci-fi shelf—but there, it’s a rather boring read. A few people have retinal computer contact lenses or bracelets that can read their heart rate; most everyone has a TruYou account, which puts all the clutter of our desperate online lives into one place. But these things appear briefly and peripherally while the plot turns on a small camera—hardly the most innovative of inventions. Given the technology sci-fi writers have come up with over the years—cyborgs, clones, machines that can read minds, minds that can read each other—the developments in The Circle are largely mundane.

Another genre option is that The Circle portrays a near-future dystopia, and there are some nods at dystopian literature. A scene near the end resembles the final moments of John the savage in Brave New World: as cameras and drones fly around him, capturing his panic for the world to watch, a character bleakly realizes that no other option is available to him. But inasmuch as it feels dystopian, this book feels preparatory. Throughout the book there’s chatter about some impending event involving “completion,” but this main event, the actual dystopia, comes after the last page; The Circle is a prelude. Nor does Eggers ever describe what his world looks like after the main event, even when he alludes to it. There are rumors in the book of what “completion” means: “What happens when the Circle closes the circle?” But the question is rhetorical. It repeats and lingers, but not even a single scene suggests a form. The focus of the book is not here.

And I believe it would be mistaken (though several reviews have tried) to read this book as tech criticism. That reading assumes that a book that involves technology must be read as if the author were focusing on technology. This would turn Hamlet into a play about paranormal activity, and make Don Quixote focus on wind power. To choose tech criticism as The Circle’s genre, it would have to be shown that Eggers “has it in” for particular technologies. If he had a character through which he expresses distaste for technology, it would be Mae’s ex, Mercer. Mercer fits conspicuously into a category that has turned into a cultural type: the Luddite. But the Luddites fought over the economic aspect of new machinery—and actually burned some machines down. Mercer burns nothing down, and he doesn’t care at all about the economics. In fact, he’s really not a Luddite, and he’s not really anti-technology. He’s less concerned about technology than about what becomes of Mae when she uses it. Technology is beside the point—still within view, but not the focus. What Mercer says that turns Mae’s patient forbearing into disgust is not ethical or economic, but socio-political. “Do you realize,” he says to Mae, “how boring you’ve become?”

Heidegger wrote, “the essence of technology is not a technology.” Technology per se, he went on, is man revealing a truth about the world. (The battery reveals the world as stored energy, the written word reveals the world as engraved with meaning, and so on.) Eggers is not interested in individual varieties of technology. Rather, he wants to explore what truth social technology reveals about man. During a (fairly recent) time in history, men fought in courts, battlefields, culture, and academies for the privilege of freedom in one’s private life. They stringently defended right to be individual, the chance to be unique. That cry for individualism is still around today, but is it still the highest expression of political freedom? Being individual now feels isolating, lonely, even undesirable. The movement that Eggers seems interested in is from autonomy to assimilation. In the world of The Circle, he lets the political desires of mankind turn from individual independence to social cooperation. Perhaps will turn—or have turned—from the desire for individuation to the desire to eliminate difference, to be one of the crowd.