The Circle by Dave Eggers

 

Microsoft. Google. Apple. It seems their main objective is to blanket the world with their technology. They can do this only by capturing data provided by users.

 If not held in check or stopped, just imagine what the world be like. Imagine what your life would be like.

In this book of fiction told through the point of view of a young woman named Mae we are able to explore those questions.

It starts out with Mae getting hired by a group that is based at a campus. Her main job is to monitor data and at the same time come up with better ideas on how to make the complete world transparent.

Think of a time in which you were not alone. You could always be found. Your privacy is gone.

Small startup companies want what you have. To be a player you must be absorbed.

Just how much would a person be willing to lose to follow and be part of a transparent society?

The campus sounds a lot like one you know about already-Google. Only you hope that what you are reading here is not actual.

Mae finds herself caught up in this world of trying to be the best. Her accomplishment is based on a number system that is consistently being flashed before her on a computer screen. Her achievement and advancement within the group is based on being better rated than the next. In order to achieve she spends more and more time in the complex and not with the public. It starts to become an obsession with her.

These are some of the issues handled by Dave Eggers in this believable and very frightening novel. You have to hope it hasn’t gone this far. You have to hope that there are ways to check it. You have to hope this vision of a world where technology becomes all obsessive will not be our future.

Technology is meant to be a tool, not our master.

This is a good read and ,sad to say, very possible. It may already be present. We may have already gone too far.