The Circle by Dave Eggers is a cautionary, futuristic novel centered around a young woman, Mae Holland, as she makes her way through a tyrannical corporation called The Circle. Brainwashed by The Circle and it’s goal to make the world a “better place”, Mae along with others, work with the company to complete the circle- a symbolic representation of perfection, greed, and all of society encapsulated within its power. Living in Silicon Valley, and being immersed in the corporate tech world, I agree with Eggers that corporate greed extends beyond money, and is the desire to gather information to oversee and control society.
Throughout the book, new technology and innovations claim to better society, but are also tools used to collect a plethora
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For example, when Mae hunts down and talks to Mercer while presenting SoulSearch, a tool intended to track criminals, he becomes so frustrated with being tracked that he commits suicide with his truck. He thought he was alone and enjoying a private life, but The Circle used the information they had on him to intrude on his life and control his actions. He was followed everywhere and could not live away from technology as he immensely desired. Throughout the novel, Mercer is a moral compass that makes it clear that greed, at its peak, extends beyond money and is a desire for all information and control that sends society into an oblivion where “the triumphalism of your peers goes too far and collapses into itself”(370). With the company’s new technology, such as the streaming technology and SoulSearch, and Mercer’s death and message to Mae, we see that The Circle gathers and shares information without individual consent to build tools for their company and gain more control over society and its every step. To put it simply, The Circle will go to any lengths to gain knowledge since knowledge is power, and this same narrative is beginning to take root in modern day …show more content…
But what is happening with Acxiom is not as severe as what happened with The Circle. The Circle’s greed created a society in which everyone is forced to share all of their information or else they would be looked down upon or harm themselves because they cannot fit in. Modern day society has not reached this extreme level of greed and demand from corporations and currently they only have control over the internet and not our lives, but if we continue to head down this path, the extremes presented in The Circle are possible outcomes. We need to work as a society during these early stages to prevent a world in which our every move, digital and nondigital, is captured and potentially
We as humans tend to have an unquenchable thirst for knowledge. We look for knowledge about everybody and everything that surrounds us in our day-to-day life. Sadly though, we must accept that in the grand scheme of life we (as a society) tend to put pleasure above our quest for knowledge. The pursuit of knowledge tends to take time and energy, two things we call invaluable, and it also shows us things that might depress us. Contrastingly, ignorance takes no time and energy.
The importance of profit is a central theme of the novel that demonstrates a disregard for morality. Corporations
So to say, knowledge can either make or break a person. It can act as a benefit, for power, or loss, for ignorance. “Do not take for granted what you know. Ask yourself how you know what you know; ask yourself whom it benefits, whom it hurts and why.” (Blackboard: Knowledge is Power)
When you think of the internet, usually what first comes to mind is social networking, online marketplaces, and other places that don’t sound that bad. Look deeper and you’ll find that the internet isn’t as nice as you thought it was. This “dark side” of the net is comprised of everything looked down upon in the real world – drugs, weapons, false identities, and even hit men for hire exist in this rough-and-tumble darknet. Not just physical products, but virtual products float around as well; from term papers to file sharing and even e-currency populate this dark area.
From movies and everyday jobs, to life experiences and the classroom,knowledge can be gained. For instance in the movie, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, Finnick says, “I haven’t dealt in anything as common as money in years.” Katniss then asks, “Well then how do people pay for the pleasure of your company?” Finnick responds, “With secrets.” (Francis Lawrence The Hunger Games: Catching Fire) Even in everyday jobs, people trade knowledge for a service. Everyone uses knowledge to gain something from undercover agents being informants to an attorney offering reduced sentences or lesser charges to someone under suspicion of a crime. Getting an education to gain knowledge and learning how to best use that knowledge can be the best weapon to go down any road in this
Knowledge is power, my mom told me if I acquired knowledge in life I would command respect, I would view life differently most importantly I would be able to control my destiny. The president of The greatest country in the world, United States of American was voted in as a president in 2008 because he had great knowledge and his knowledge did command respect. The allegory of the cave was presented by a Greek philosopher Plato in his work the republican in order to compare the effect of education and the lack of it on our nation. “And now, I said, let me show in a figure how far our nature is enlightened or unenlightened” (Plato 1). Plato tried to explain the nature of reality during his time.
“...a constant passion for knowledge that will reveal to them something of reality which endures forever.” This shows that they care and value knowledge and the craving for more knowledge.
It was not that the learning was too hard for us. It was that the learning was too easy. This is a great sin, to be born with a head which is too quick. It is not good to be different from our brothers, but it is evil to be superior to them. The Teachers told us so, and they frowned when they looked upon us…” (21). “No single one can possess greater wisdom than the many scholars who are elected by all men for their wisdom, yet we can. We do. We have fought against saying it, but now it is said. We do not care. We forget all men, all laws and all things save our metals and our wires. So much is still to be learned! So long a road lies before us, and what care we if we must travel it alone!” (54). Equality 7-2521 was born with a curse, the desire to know. He was always unsatisfied by the finite amount of education given to him at the Home of the Students. He craved more knowledge, to learn and discover more about the world and himself. However, these urges are strongly frowned upon in Equality’s society, as any new information and discoveries could disrupt the way of life that the Councils have tried so hard to maintain. The Council of Vocations felt threatened by Equality’s amount of knowledge and quick wit because he didn’t fit into society’s typical “norm”. They feared that he was a potential individual and that if he was put into a high position, such as a Scholar, that he would
The pursuit of knowledge can lead to a humans destruction and awareness. The pursuit of
...lusion, the quest for more knowledge and power can only be perceived as bad if it twists and corrupts the mind. But in reality, it is indeed a good thing to gain more knowledge and the power that comes with it since development and human advancement cannot have come this far without it. Knowledge, a popular adage says, is power!
Part of the allure of the Internet has always been the anonymity it offers its users. As the Internet has grown however, causing capitalists and governments to enter the picture, the old rules are changing fast. E-commerce firms employ the latest technologies to track minute details on customer behavior. The FBI's Carnivore email-tracking system is being increasingly used to infringe on the privacy of netizens. Corporations now monitor their employees' web and email usage. In addition to these privacy infringements, Internet users are also having their use censored, as governments, corporations, and other institutions block access to certain sites. However, as technology can be used to wage war on personal freedoms, it can also be employed in the fight against censorship and invasion of privacy.
Imagine a world in which all of life’s problems could all just go away at the click of a button. A world where every individual on the face of planet earth is being watched 24/7, therefore eliminating any possibility of a crime being committed. Imagine, if just for a moment, a world where everyone and everything are connected by the same network, which would in essence create a full and complete circle. This is the world that serves as the setting for Dave Eggers novel The Circle. The Circle is a novel about Mae, the young and enthusiastic protagonist, who gets a job at a company known as The Circle. The Circle is a revolutionary company that is creating all sorts of new and exciting technology that appear to benefit the human race as a whole.
Technology is constantly changing, growing, and evolving but with each change in technology we risk our own privacy. With each new update we get we are told it improves our network or life but in reality it makes it easier to invade our privacy just like in the novel 1984 by George Orwell. There are many parallels between 1984 and our present day like the over watchful eyes of the government for our own good.
The greed for money, power and fame. Within the corporate world, we hear of companies resorting to underhand means to attain more money, more power, and when they attain it, the vicious cycle repeats itself. However, their fall is inevitable because the law ultimately apprehends them.
As technology penetrates society through Internet sites, smartphones, social networks, and other modes of technology, questions are raised as the whether lines are being crossed. People spend a vast majority of their time spreading information about themselves and others through these various types of technology. The problem with all these variations is that there is no effective way of knowing what information is being collected and how it is used. The users of this revolutionary technology cannot control the fate of this information, but can only control their choice of releasing information into the cyber world. There is no denying that as technology becomes more and more integrated into one’s life, so does the sacrificing of that person’s privacy into the cyber world. The question being raised is today’s technology depleting the level of privacy that each member of society have? In today’s society technology has reduced our privacy due to the amount of personal information released on social networks, smartphones, and street view mapping by Google. All three of these aspects include societies tendency to provide other technology users with information about daily occurrences. The information that will be provided in this paper deals with assessing how technology impacts our privacy.