The Circle is Watching You

Upon questioning Mae regarding her run-in with the police, Eamon Bailey inquires "Would you say you behave differently when you know you're being watched?" to which Mae replies "Of course." (pg. 282) The Circle, along with its vast community and following, promotes a culture of transparency in which it is considered that "Secrets are lies, sharing is caring, and privacy is theft." The aforementioned mantras are promoted by the company and sold as a means of becoming one's "best self" and eliminating crime and corruption in society. However noble this quest may be made to seem, at its core, I find the rhetoric to be rather manipulative. In a culture absent of privacy, how can one be expected to be their true self, let alone their best self?

Eamon Bailey describes the nature of secrets as "cancerous when kept within us, but harmless when they're out in the world." (pg. 291). Employing isolated, one-sided examples he goes on to support this extreme logic. While, in some cases, secrets can be harmful, for the most part they are an inevitable reality. In order to continue her under-wraps relationship with Kalden, Mae must keep the details of this relationship secret from Annie. Despite a lack of ability to speak freely with her friend, Mae's secrecy is not explicitly harming anyone and can hardly be considered "cancerous". In addition to the novel, the innocuousness of secrets can also be observed in our culture. Some instances even exemplify secrets as a necessity in terms of safety. For example, the government keeps hidden information regarding the location of weapons of mass destruction. By keeping this information from the public, they are, in turn, preserving the safety of the public. 

While the notion that "sharing is caring" is generally regarded as positive, the Circle implements this colloquialism as a means of rhetorical manipulation. Eamon Bailey proclaims to Circlers "If you care about your fellow human beings, you share what you know with them." (pg. 304). Implementing logical fallacy, Bailey implies that if you do not publicize all personal information, you do not care about your fellow humans. Despite the fact that we live in a society where a degree of personal information is available to friends, family, colleagues, etc. we have the liberty to decide which of this information can be viewed by others. I believe that this is a prerogative we deserve. The Circle and its members, primarily Eamon Bailey, believe that by preserving this liberty, we are depriving our fellow humans. 

Another quotation from Bailey reads "So what happens if I deprive anyone or everyone of something I know? Aren't I stealing from other humans?" (pg. 305). In this manner, he seeks to justify the Circle's devout condemnation of privacy. While the Circle denounces privacy as theft, I find it to be an integral aspect of personhood. In fact, I wonder who are we, individually, absent the most intimate, personal moments of our lives? In the novel, Mae and Francis share an intimate moment after which Mae realizes Francis has been filming the whole thing, subsequently making the experience available to all via the Circle Cloud. Rightfully so, Mae is incensed, as her privacy has been infringed upon. In our society, I believe that privacy is both valued and necessary. For example, most of us don't go around dishing our deepest, darkest secrets to the first stranger we see. We are typically conservative when it comes to with whom we share the private details of our lives.


The mantras which the circle promotes as a way to a better self as well as a better community as a whole have untold impacts as they seek to undermine individuality and encourage societal conformity. When SeeChange cameras were planted all about her workplace, Mae admittedly "began to think a bit harder about the clothes she wore to work. She thought more about where she scratched,  when she blew her nose or how." (pg. 243). She began to feel the pressures of society, determining her actions based on the fear of disapproval and lack of acceptance. The Circle's mantras convey and support this pressure. In order to willingly forfeit one's own right to secrecy, personal knowledge, and privacy one would have to drastically alter his or her behavior to suit the relative society which views all this newly publicized information. It's a little bit too 1984 for my liking and a little bit to extreme to have a place in our culture which actually values individuality as well as privacy. 

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The Cost of Connection

Our lives, in terms of our history, our personality, our undertakings, etc. can be divided among two distinct areas based on preference, the private sector and the public sector. We may attempt to show a different face to our peers than that which exists in reality. We may desire to prevent certain details of our private lives from surfacing to the public. However, in modern society, the line between such distinct areas has grown thin. With the unprecedented rise of social networking systems, data with regard to our individual life has become increasingly available. Subsequently, privacy for the individual has been heavily diminished. This conflict, which can be characterized by the seemingly inverse relationship between data and privacy, is a central element in Dave Eggers’ The Circle. As Mae delves further into her employment at the elite internet giant, the Circle, and as technology within the company progresses, Mae’s privacy continually diminishes as data pertaining to this sector of her life continually accumulates within the Circle’s all-encompassing, omnipotent system.

As an employee of a company whose philosophy is “all that happens must be known”, Mae is forced to part with the level of privacy she previously enjoyed for the sake of the Circle’s overall data bank. One major example of this is the concept of PartiRank, which gauges an employee’s comparative involvement with those also in the company. PartiRank “takes into account zings, exterior followers of intra-company zings, your comments on others’ zings, your comments on other Circler’s profiles, your photos posted, attendance at Circle events, as well as comments and photos posted about those events (pg. 101)” Essentially, this implementation by company executives forces Mae, and all employees for that matter, to engage publicly with her coworkers, adding data, which might typically be considered private, into the Circle’s system. It’s as if Mae must surrender her privacy as an internet identity for the sake of her job.

According to Circlers, personal experience that is not shared with the world and consequently added to the company’s database, is selfish. On one occasion, Mae was reproached by her supervisor, as she ventured on an impromptu kayaking trip and did not add her experience to the collective memory of the world. Not only must Mae sacrifice some sense of privacy in terms of her internet presence with her coworkers, but she’s also required to document and publish moments of her life that would be ubiquitously considered as highly personal and deservedly private. Just as Mae’s present experiences are required to be made public, her past experiences have been made public, via the Cloud, as well. This is illustrated in Mae’s invitation to the “Portugal brunch” on account of the fact that she has pictures on her computer from a visit to Portugal five years prior.

As exemplified by instances within the novel, data, which the Circle values so heavily, is acquired at the expense of privacy. In turn, an inverse relationship between data and privacy is formed. Though decidedly exaggerated, the fictional depiction of this relationship by Dave Eggers sheds light on some relevant issues within our actual society. Social media, monitoring of internet traffic by government agencies, and other modern-day systems which facilitate knowledge and communication certainly pose benefits. However, when privacy is breached for the sake of such facilitation, does the reward really outweigh the cost?
 

 

Book Cover- try not to judge it