I finally completed reading the acclaimed novel of Dave Eggers. The topic of the book is within my research area, so it was a must-read, but I also heard so many nice things about `The Circle`. The context is set in an Engineering and Technology company (similar to Google) called `The Circle`, which has a span of products that its users/customers use. The products can be used with a single login name, and they are all integrated (sounds familiar, right?). In order to use The Circle products, that are "the most dominant and ubiquitous and free, you had to do so as yourself, as your actual self, as your TruYou. The era of fales identities, identity theft, multiple user names, complicated passwords and payment systems, was over...Once you had a single account, it carried you through every corner of the web, every portal, every pay site, everything you wanted to do"(p22). So it was end of anonymity and also it meant our real identities are traced, analyzed, profiled and also acted upon all the time (Again, not much of a distant story - I know that as I am writing these lines, all the logs are compiled in my google account. So the readers would not be stumped by the idea, it is the extend of it that is different from our current state. Imagine there is just one company who has the capabilities of all these tech companies, a total monopoly). The Circle is considered as one of the most desired companies to be employed. Thus, our protagonist - Mae - is a new recruit, dazzled by the services, technology and capabilities of the Circle tools and also by its corporate benefits. I like the book in two respects, first, it bluntly portrays the direction of the technological advancements (of course in a more dramatized way, as there is not much global organized resistance portrayed in the book, such as the privacy lobbies); and second it is actually a criticism of corporate life where all the employees are made part of the shiny world of the big international companies.
The book can also be considered as a response to those still believing in the idea of `I have nothing to hide`, thus surveillance of any kind can be accepted for the bigger good of security, education etc. without drawing a line. Would you like people to know who you voted for in the last election? or what your sicknesses are? or what you are thinking right now? or any of your choices that you make by yourself? Would you like all this to be open to public? Thus, then why should a company should know all your actions, all your clicks, all the products you bought in the internet or offline. They are personal decisions, given without taking into account any consequences. But what if they have consequences as they actually fill in the gaps in your data-profile. Then Especially the last chapter of the book allows the reader to think about these issues.
The surveillance practices varies and they are accepted as a normal part of the daily life, either by corporations, by individuals, by institutions, and the book portrays it very well through portraying a global understanding where absolute transparency (to watch, to be watched, being always at the gaze, to be judged) become the norm, where `right to disappear`(p.490) vanishes. Being connected is the norm and moreover it is a must.
Of course, most of the characters in the book is portrayed from a technological deterministic point of view: The Circle will save the world with all technologies it will offer. But as with any technology, multiple directions a technology can take within use is an open question. What would humans do with that technology, what will be the unintended consequences be, would it be accepted in the same fashion all over the world? All these questions are actually left to the imagination of the reader, in the sense that Eggers actually displays us the completion of the Circle, but he leaves the portrayals of struggles within this process to the imagination of the reader. Eggers also provides us a point of criticism through the main character, Mae, who believes technology can solve it all. Once it is put into use, it will solve all the problem in the world. It is like these computer advertisements, where once there are computers in the schools, the students will suddenly become geniouses :) Well, are they geniouses? (I know, this is a very simplistic point of view :).
I recommend the book to all! Great book that will urge you to think about technology, surveillance and data ownership. Do numbers tell it all? Does created reality or constructed reality (in the CCTV, in the internet, as your data double) tell it all about our reality? Who do our data belong to? Once you put them in the cloud/social media/web/in our computer, who owns our data?
The Circle:
https://www.amazon.com/Circle-Dave-Eggers/dp/0345807294
A review by Margaret Atwood
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2013/11/21/eggers-circle-when-privacy-is-theft/
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