The Circle

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     crazed last week and didn’t get a chance to set it up.”
    “Okay. But just know, from now on, that being social, and being a presence on your
     profile and all related accounts—this is part of why you’re here. We consider your
     online presence to be integral to your work here. It’s all connected.”
    “I know. Again, I’m sorry to have misstated my feelings.”
    “Good. Okay, let’s start by setting this up.” Gina reached over Mae’s divider and
     retrieved another screen, bigger than her second screen, which she quickly arranged
     and connected to Mae’s computer.
    “Okay. So your second screen will continue to be the way you’ll stay in touch with
     your team. That will be exclusively for CE business.Your third screen is for your social participation, in the company Circle and your
     wider Circle. Does that make sense?”
    “It does.”
    Mae watched Gina activate the screen, and felt a thrill. She’d never had such an elaborate
     arrangement before. Three screens for someone so low on the ladder! Only at the Circle.
    “Okay, first I want to go back to your second screen,” Gina said. “I don’t think you’ve
     activated CircleSearch. Let’s do that.” An elaborate, three-dimensional map of the
     campus appeared. “This is pretty simple, and just allows you to find anyone on campus
     in case you need a face-to-face.”
    Gina pointed to a pulsing red dot.
    “Here’s you. You’re red hot! I’m kidding.” As if recognizing that might have been
     considered inappropriate, Gina quickly moved on. “Didn’t you say you knew Annie? Let’s
     type in her name.” A blue dot appeared in the Old West. “She’s in her office, surprise
     surprise. Annie is a machine.”
    Mae smiled. “She is.”
    “I’m so jealous you know her so well,” Gina said, smiling but briefly and unconvincingly.
     “And over here you’ll see a cool new app, which sort of gives us a history of the
     building every day. You can see when each staffer checked in every day, when they
     left the building. This gives us a really nice sense of the life of the company. This
     part you don’t have to update yourself, of course. If you go to the pool, your ID
     automatically updates that on the feed. And outside of the movement, any additional
     commentary would be up to you, and of course would be encouraged.”
    “Commentary?” Mae asked.
    “You know, like what you thought of lunch, a new feature at the gym, anything. Just
     basic ratings and likes and comments. Nothing out of the ordinary, and of course all
     input helps us do a better job at serving the Circle community. Now that commentary
     is done right here,” she said, and revealed that every building and room could be
     clicked on, and within, she could add any comments about anything or anyone.
    “So that’s your second screen. It’s about your coworkers, your team, and it’s about
     finding people in the physical space. Now it’s on to the really fun stuff. Screen
     three. This is where your main social and Zing feeds appear. I heard you weren’t a
     Zing user?”
    Mae admitted she hadn’t been, but wanted to be.
    “Great,” Gina said. “So now you have a Zing account. I made up a name for you: MaeDay.
     Like the war holiday. Isn’t that cool?”
    Mae wasn’t so sure about the name, and couldn’t remember a holiday by that name.
    “And I connected your Zing account with the total Circle community, so you just got
     10,041 new followers! Pretty cool. In terms of your own zinging, we’d expect about
     ten or so a day, but that’s sort of a minimum. I’m sure you’ll have more to say than
     that. Oh, and over here’s your playlist. If you listen to music while you work, the
     feed automatically sends that playlist out to everyone else, and it goes into the
     collective playlist, which ranks the most-played songs in any given day, week, month.
     It has the top one hundred songs campuswide, but you can also slice it a thousand
     ways—top-played hip-hop, indie, country, anything. You’ll get recommendations based
     on what you play, and what others with similar taste play—it’s all cross-pollinating
     while you’re working. Make sense?”
    Mae nodded.
    “Now, next to the Zing feed, you’ll see the window for your primary social feed. You’ll
     also see that we split it into two parts, the InnerCircle social feed, and your external
     social, that’s your OuterCircle. Isn’t that cute? You can merge them, but we find
     it