Greyson Jennings
9 November 2014
Political Life
To Be Advanced, Or To Be Free?
Who would think that the technology of the future would also mean a person must sacrifice their privacy? In Dave Egger’s 2013 novel, The Circle is very advanced in technology, but because they are so advanced they overstepped their bounds and have now begun to intrude on personal privacy. Once a person begins work for The Circle their privacy is automatically given up. However, people do not notice it is such a big deal until later when it starts to affect other aspects of their life completely unrelated to The Circle. This essay is a brief glimpse into The Circle and the mass scale privacy invasion they were holding. The Circle does this by, a few programs called …show more content…
No anonymity is the basic concept of The Circle. This means that everything is linked together and tracked by this program called TruYou. The concept of TruYou is “One account, one identity, one password, one payment system, per person. There were no more passwords, no multiple identities. Your devices knew who you were, and your identity.” (21) TruYou is a database that holds most information about a person someone would need to know. For example this database holds a persons social security number, their driver license, interests, hobbies, as well as personal information like where they live, etc., this allows The Circle to keep track of every aspect of a persons life. The Circle then took the no anonymity one step further with Circle Search. This is a program that allows members of The Circle to view at any time where anyone in The Circle is on campus. An example of this would be when Mae looks for Annie on the CircleSearch and see that she is in her office. This program allows anyone to see at any time where all The Circle staff is at that exact moment. They a tracked by a bracelet that everyone is the company wears. This bracelet monitors your vitals as well as allows you to see your InnerCircle and OuterCircle …show more content…
This means that a person has a camera on them twenty-four seven; the person does have the option to turn their camera off at ten at night, so that initially a person would see what the person wearing the camera is seeing. This is a small camera that goes around Mae’s neck like a locket that allows all of her viewers to see what she is seeing. The initial purpose of going transparent was for the government and high up officials, so that the people would know what is going on behind closed doors, and because a democracy is the goal, they feel everyone has the right to know, so they too can help make decisions. This would then allow the public to watch every meeting that the individual did, so they would know the facts first hand. Mae goes transparent and ends up becoming popular icon of The Circle. Mae goes transparent so she gets to be at every important meeting that The Circle holds. But because Mae is transparent it starts to cause problems within her personal life not involving The Circle. Everyone who is not involved in The Circle began to want separation to have anything to do with Mae, because they do not want their personal life to be public knowledge. Mae’s parents are an example of this as well as Annie, Mae’s best friend and the whole reason Mae got the job at The Circle in the first place. These are people who Mae used to be rather quite close with and then once she became transparent they told her to
9 November 2014
Political Life
To Be Advanced, Or To Be Free?
Who would think that the technology of the future would also mean a person must sacrifice their privacy? In Dave Egger’s 2013 novel, The Circle is very advanced in technology, but because they are so advanced they overstepped their bounds and have now begun to intrude on personal privacy. Once a person begins work for The Circle their privacy is automatically given up. However, people do not notice it is such a big deal until later when it starts to affect other aspects of their life completely unrelated to The Circle. This essay is a brief glimpse into The Circle and the mass scale privacy invasion they were holding. The Circle does this by, a few programs called …show more content…
No anonymity is the basic concept of The Circle. This means that everything is linked together and tracked by this program called TruYou. The concept of TruYou is “One account, one identity, one password, one payment system, per person. There were no more passwords, no multiple identities. Your devices knew who you were, and your identity.” (21) TruYou is a database that holds most information about a person someone would need to know. For example this database holds a persons social security number, their driver license, interests, hobbies, as well as personal information like where they live, etc., this allows The Circle to keep track of every aspect of a persons life. The Circle then took the no anonymity one step further with Circle Search. This is a program that allows members of The Circle to view at any time where anyone in The Circle is on campus. An example of this would be when Mae looks for Annie on the CircleSearch and see that she is in her office. This program allows anyone to see at any time where all The Circle staff is at that exact moment. They a tracked by a bracelet that everyone is the company wears. This bracelet monitors your vitals as well as allows you to see your InnerCircle and OuterCircle …show more content…
This means that a person has a camera on them twenty-four seven; the person does have the option to turn their camera off at ten at night, so that initially a person would see what the person wearing the camera is seeing. This is a small camera that goes around Mae’s neck like a locket that allows all of her viewers to see what she is seeing. The initial purpose of going transparent was for the government and high up officials, so that the people would know what is going on behind closed doors, and because a democracy is the goal, they feel everyone has the right to know, so they too can help make decisions. This would then allow the public to watch every meeting that the individual did, so they would know the facts first hand. Mae goes transparent and ends up becoming popular icon of The Circle. Mae goes transparent so she gets to be at every important meeting that The Circle holds. But because Mae is transparent it starts to cause problems within her personal life not involving The Circle. Everyone who is not involved in The Circle began to want separation to have anything to do with Mae, because they do not want their personal life to be public knowledge. Mae’s parents are an example of this as well as Annie, Mae’s best friend and the whole reason Mae got the job at The Circle in the first place. These are people who Mae used to be rather quite close with and then once she became transparent they told her to