ICE CUBES
REFLECTING ON THE IDEAS POSED IN DAVE EGGERS; THE CIRCLE, A NOVEL THAT EXPLORES TRANSPARENCY AND ITS EFFECTS ON US.
“It was not knowing that was the seed of madness, loneliness, suspicion, fear.”
-DAVE EGGERS, THE CIRCLE
Mae Holland has landed a job at the Circle, “the most influential company in the world,” with help from her college friend Annie. The Circle, created by three "Wise Men," combines all of one's online interactions (social media and other business and personal communication, medical information, everything) into a single online identity called a TruYou, and has been growing to contain virtually all the other information that exists across the world. The company uses technological innovation to create what it claims is a more efficient and accountable society, especially by increasing transparency in government, business, and even personal lives. Cameras are everywhere, biological functions are monitored wirelessly, and the Circle adds more and more to its network. Mae begins work in Customer Experience and initially is concerned about her privacy, but she quickly rises in the ranks, gaining access to more screens of information (some of which she wears) and getting sucked into the arguments for full transparency, while her parents and ex-boyfriend Mercer grow increasingly horrified by the new rejection of private spaces and off-the-grid anonymity. She also becomes romantically involved with two men, an awkward coworker named Francis and a mysterious man who calls himself "Kalden." Kalden warns her of the dangers of "completing" the Circle, that is, making everything known to everyone so superficially and with so little respect for the individual. After Mae is caught illegally kayaking at night, she goes through a session of public shaming in front of the whole company and thus accepts a role as the primary "transparent" face of the Circle. She becomes world-famous, rejects Kalden's concerns. Meanwhile, government officials and then more and more people are pressured to give up their privacy to go transparent so that the rest of the world can keep tabs on their morals.
The ethos of the Circle, as Bailey puts it, is "ultimate transparency. No filter. See everything. Always". Transparency is on the one hand a mechanism of morality, using the eyes of others to enforce good behavior.
The value of transparency is also tied to innovation and collective wisdom. By gathering data about anything and everything, the Circle promotes the growth of knowledge and of new techniques to improve health, wealth and well-being. All of which serves to justify the company mission statement:
"All that happens must be known."
How would you feel about walking around with a camera that films just about every second of every day of your waking life? And not just filming it but live streaming it, for anyone who wants to, to log on and see. How would that effect you?
The protagonist, Mae, has no difficulty with this philosophy. She is working for what she believes is the best company in the world. But how is it affecting her behavior? How is it changing her life?
The first time the camera redirected her actions was when she went to the kitchen for something to eat. The image on her wrist showed the interior of the refrigerator, as she scanned for a snack. , she would have grabbed a chilled brownie, but seeing the image of her hand reaching for it, and seeing what everyone else would be seeing, she pulled back. She closed the fridge, and from the bowl on the counter, she selected a packet of almonds, and left the kitchen. -DAVE EGGERS, THE CIRCLE
If you new or even thought that everything you did was being watched, would you make better choices? Eat healthier? Exercise more?Think about what you say before you say it? Would you begin to implement better habits into your life? Is it a bad thing that transparency might change your behavior?
Think about it. If you only did and said things that you wouldn't mind your parents seeing? Would that affect your life in a positive way? What would a world of truth look like?
Egger poses some interesting ideas as far as new technology to implement transparency and make the world a better place. Ideas to increase overall health and safety. Does that sound like something you want? A safe and healthy life?
One of these is a a medical aid to monitor and track over all health.
"Have you seen one of these?" The doctor held outa silver bracelet, about 3 inches wide.
"i think so, it measures your heart rate?"
"it has to touch the skin, of course, to measure what we'd like to measure-which is everything. You did want the full program, right?"
"okay, can you dink this?"The doctor handed Mae the dense green liquid she'd been preparing. "it's a smoothie."
Mae drank it down
"okay, you just ingested the sensor that will connect to your wrist monitor. It was in that glass."
"so the sensor is already in me?"
"It is. And now," the doctor said, tapping Mae's wrist monitor,"now it's active. It'll collect data on your heart rate, blood pressure, cholesterol, heat flux, caloric intake, sleep duration, sleep quality, digestive efficiency, on and on. A nice thing for Circlers, especially those like you who might have occasionally stressful jobs, is that it measures galvanic skin response, which allows you to know when your amped or anxious. When we see non-normative rates of stress in a Circlerer department , we make make adjustments to workload, for example. It measures the pH level of your sweat, so you can tell when you need to hydrate with alkaline water. It detects your posture, so you know when you need to re position yourself. Blood and tissue oxygen, your red blood cell count, and things like step count. As you know, doctors recommend about ten thousand steps a day, and this will show you how close you're getting."
"The idea is that with complete information we can give better care. Incomplete information creates gaps in our knowledge, and medically speaking, gaps in our knowledge create mistakes and omissions"
"I know", Mae said. "That was the problem in college for me. You self reported your health data, and so it was all over the place. Three kids died from meningitis before they realized how it was spreading."
Dr, Vilalobo's expression darkened. "you know that kind of thing is unnecessary now. First of all you can't expect college kids to self report."
"and of course," Dr. Villalobos said," all that data is stored in the cloud , and in your tablet, anywhere you want it. It's always accessible, and it's constantly updated. So if you fall, hit your head, you're in the ambulance, the EMT's can access everything about your history in seconds.
-DAVE EGGERS, THE CIRCLE
Is this something you can see making your life better? Would you be willing to wear a bracelet and swallow a chip that records everything that's going on inside your body? Would you want to be notified when your not meeting the standards that doctors recommend is best for your over all health? Would you be happy to contribute your personal information to the medical community to potentially help your peers?
Another one of the ideas is technological aids for locating criminals.
"Every day, police pull over people for whats known as 'driving while black' or 'driving while brown,' "Belinda said evenly, "and every day, young African-American men are stopped in the street, thrown against a wall, frisked, stripped of their rights and dignity."-DAVE EGGERS, THE CIRCLE
Egger's world seems to bear an uncanny resemblance to the one we live in. It is a harsh reality, but a reality none the less. Is there Something we can do to change this? To put an end to racial profiling? Would you stop it if you coud?
Belinda continued; "these practices only create more animosity between the people of color and the police. See this crowd? ts mostly young men of color, right? A police cruiser goes by an area like this, and they're all suspects, right? Everyone of these men might be stopped, searched, disrespected. But it doesn't have to be that way."
Now, on-screen,amid the crowd,three of the men in the picture were glowing orange and red. They continued to walk, to act normally, but now they were bathed in color, as if a spotlight, with colored gels, was singling them out.
"The three men you see in orange and red are repeat offenders. Orange indicates a low-level criminal-a guy convicted of petty thefts, drug possession, nonviolent and largely victim-less crimes."
There were two men in the frame who had been colored orange. Walking closer to the camera, though, was an innocuous-enough seeming man of about fifty, glowing red from head to toe. "The man signaling red,though, has been convicted of violent crimes. This man has been found guilty of armed robbery, attempted rape, repeated assaults."
Belinda continued; "We're seeing what an officer would see if he were equipped with SeeYou. It's a simple enough system that works through any retinal. He doesn't have to do a thing. He scans the crowd, and he immediately sees all the people with prior convictions. Imagine if you're a cop in New York, suddenly a city of eight million becomes infinitely more manageable when you know where to focus your energies."
-DAVE EGGERS, THE CIRCLE
Is this the right way to handle criminals? Weeding out the good guys? Tag the convicts so instead of cops grabbing the closest person of color, or tattooed guy and terrorizing them, they'd be using an app that shows real criminals in distinct colors?
These technologies created to build transparency would not be only for the every day citizen but also for the government.
"Now this new era of transparency dove tails with some other ideas I have about democracy, and the role that technology can play in making it complete. And I use the word complete on purpose, because our work towards transparency might actually achieve a fully accountable government. As you've seen, the governor of Arizona has had her entire staff go transparent, which is the next step. In a few cases, even with a clear elected official, we've seen some corruption behind the scenes. The transparent elected have been used as figure heads, shielding the backroom from view, but that will change soon, I believe. The officials, and their entire offices with nothing to hide, will go transparent within the year."-DAVE EGGERS, THE CIRCLE
What would a transparent government look like? Would you be interested to look in on the daily activities of our president? See what goes on behind closed doors in our government? How would transparency affect the decisions the government makes? How would it feel to know that the government has no secrets, that we can know everything they know? Would it modify their behavior for the better like it did Mae's?
So far in exploring the ideas posed in Eggers, The Circle, we have discovered that, transparency could mean; making better choices, creating better habits, having the ability to lead a healthier lifestyle and help doctors to maintain a healthy environment, making everyone safer while preventing the disrespect of minorities, and the government exposed, a fully accountable government. That doesn' t sound so bad to me.
Now for the obvious reasons, people find these ideologies frightening. The concern of what the government will do with all this information. The fear of loosing freedom and privacy.
What is it that we are really afraid of? Afraid of the government knowing everything were doing?
Everyone seeing everything we do, people having access to all our personal information?
They already do. The government can listen in to any phone call, access any camera. We give permission to most off the apps on our phone to access all sorts of information, our location, our camera, our microphone, even our messages, and tons of other things. We share most of our lives on social media anyways, constantly posting things, trying to get followers.
’But who wants to be watched all the time?’
‘I do. I want to be seen. I want proof I existed [ . . . ] Most people do. Most people would trade everything they know, everyone they know — they’d trade it all to know they’ve been seen, and acknowledged, that they might even be remembered. We all know we die. We all know the world is too big for us to be significant. So all we have is the hope of being seen, or heard, even for a moment.” -DAVE EGGERS, THE CIRCLE
So are we afraid of having no privacy, of being seen not as the beautiful person in the edited photos but how we really look? Or of being caught masturbating, or having sex, possibly doing drugs? People hearing what you really think, seeing how you actually feel?
Would these fears still exist if the entire world were transparent? If everyone could be seen at any given time. If we could see the celebrities, the people who set the unattainable standard for physical appearance, without all the makeup and the editing.
If everyone you know masturbates, and has sex. If you live in a world where these things are seen as normal parts of life, and knowledge that can help someone who is yet to experience such things would it really bother you?
Do you think you are special enough that anyone would even be watching?
If you and your friends are doing a little coke or molly, you think anyone would care?
Would it be so bad if people knew the truth about each other?
If you grew up in a world where everything anyone did was accessible to anyone, would embarrassment's exist, would bully's exist? Think about the weirdest, most embarrassing thing that you do, everyone else has something too, is your thing really that bad? Chances are if you are doing it so are a lot of other people, so if everyone knows, and everyone is doing it, it's no longer note worthy.
The power would no longer lie in the hands of the government. Knowledge is power, and the knowledge of all things would be available to everyone.
“It occurred to her, in a moment of sudden clarity, that what had always caused her anxiety, or stress, or worry, was not any one force, nothing independent and external- it wasn't danger to herself or the constant calamity of other people and their problems. It was internal: it was subjective: it was not knowing.”
-DAVE EGGERS, THE CIRCLE
