The New New

There’s a running gag in The Circle, Dave Eggers’s 2013 Silicon Valley satire, in which more monitors are added to a person’s desk as they rise in the ranks at a very FacebookGoogleAppleTwitter-esque tech giant. At one point, the protagonist’s desk balances nine screens, each beckoning, summoning, and passive-aggressively demanding her acknowledgment.

Eggers was onto something. In 2018, screens are everywhere. Screens are on our desks at work, of course, but they’re also flashing information on the subway, at bus stops, cycling ads on restroom walls, in elevators, displaying cooking segments in doctors’ waiting rooms, broadcasting the NBA at restaurants…