After reading the attached article regarding how corporates are now leasing or renting out their own workspaces or campuses, I would like to compare it to The Circle and their own campus. The article mentions that if companies do not build every year, but every 50 years and that if they will build every 50 years, then they might as well go out and invest to make that campus as kick ass as possible. In “The Circle”, the campus is giant. There are dorms, restaurants, entertainment, and of course, the giant workspace. Inside the workspace, the latest technology lies at the fingertips and eyeballs of the employees. The campus in the novel is by no means a small investment, it seems more like a project. Another comparison from the article to the novel is the section regarding work-life balance. The article talks about how companies want their employees to feel valued by providing high quality meals or gyms and support centers. In the novel, there’s daycare, sports courts, highly renowned bands, and top quality chefs for their employees. At some point in these first 71 pages, I was reminded of “The Giver” which changed my attitude towards this novel as I was reading in the sense that something dark and unexpected may be coming up which sets the tone for the entire novel. Anyways, inside the workplace, everything is made of glass. There is a certain section of the building where Mae looked up and thought people were floating while eating their meals. The elevators, work space dividers, literally everything was glass. Why? Transparency. The entire concept of TruYou is transparency (take notes Hillary). The company reflects its entire existence in its workspace. I personally would hate this in a place of work, but I think it actually would be very beneficial for me as a worker. With colleagues, and managers and even visitors being able to see everything I do, it would force me to be always working when I am supposed to be so I don’t break a folkway and have an awkward moment with someone because they caught me being lazy and not doing what I am supposed to be doing. As Mae did her job in CE, or Customer Experience, her managers, Annie (someone in a whole different department) and practically the entire campus of over 10,000 were able to see that she was doing exceptional for her first day of work. Her managers don’t even need to see what she’s doing physically. However, the utopian feeling generated on campus makes Mae and assumably the other workers feel comfortable and safe with each other so maybe the whole transparent atmosphere in the building is not as bad as it seems in my head. Just look back to the little thumb cameras. It was a few pages talking about how easy it would be to place cameras all over the world to see what you want to see without people knowing that you’re watching. On page 71, Annie whispers, “All that happens will be known,” which is the slogan for the little piece of technology. It creeped me out a little just because she whispered it out loud. This might be because I value privacy a lot but I think we all do in the world we live in today, also going back and criticizing myself for what I said earlier, these are all very qualified and motivated people who don’t need transparency to be motivated. But I always like to add myself in the equation and see how I would act under the same circumstances a character in a book is placed
Your point about transparency as motivation is well-taken, and one that not many of your classmates talked about too much. The quantification is pretty clearly a motivation (we all like to see the highest number next to our name), but the transparency effect does something similar, as well. Nice work.