Each and every day society shows signs of becoming more technologically savvy. To speak to some examples – the iPhone 7 has recently emerged (following many other similar but not as advanced models); laptops are becoming lighter and lighter in combination with the ability to have more storage, TVs have developed the ability to be linked to computers – “smart TVs.” We are living in a digitally advanced world – whether you like it or not, the aspects of your life will be stored and detected for as long as technology exists. Essentially, technology has the ability to invade the privacy of your life – and certain aspects of the circle, by Dave Eggars, present strikingly similar correlations between data and privacy.
As we know, the circle is a technology based company – a company that “considers [itself] on the forefront of social media;” (186) a company that runs on the sole power of a computerized website which requires employees to input anything from where they were at 1 in the afternoon to what party they went to that night; a company that destroys the line between data and privacy. As long as the circle exists, the “data” in every employee’s life, like Mae’s, will be public forever.
Having privacy is simply unavoidable at a company like the circle. Nothing that the employees did daily could be private: Mae had personal pictures from past vacations – something she most likely wouldn’t have wanted to share with the entire company, yet as soon as the company scanned her computer, they went up into the cloud (111). Generally, health records are kept private between you and your doctor, but the circle deems it necessary to have your records public – having its employees swallow sensors so they can be provided with each employees heart rate, blood pressure, etc. – unnecessary, private information that doesn’t need to be shared with others (155). At some point, having as much data as The Circle wants just gets excessive.
In the same sense, even in the chance that Mae did feel comfortable sharing private information with a few of her closer friends at the circle – i.e., Annie, – the expectations of the circle certainly do not permit this. In asking Mae to come to her office, Dan rapidly fires questions about Mae as to where she had been the past weekend and why she hadn’t updated any of her information on the circle. Why should the act of taking personal time away from work need to be documented? In taking a visit to see her parents after her dad had been sick, it is assumable that Mae’s first thoughts hadn’t exactly been to update her “photos […], zings […], reviews […], notices […], or bumps” (175), but this is what her superiors had wanted.
The circle is one of many examples of how the line between providing data and still having privacy can often be distorted into being classified as the same thing. When you are “forced” to spare the minute details of your life – like Mae having to provide certain foods she was allergic to, how many days a week she goes kayaking, or where she was at 8:49pm on a Monday night, you become trapped in the world of technology (in this case, The Circle). By providing everything about yourself into a system, your privacy is no longer “an integral part” (188) of your life – instead, your privacy becomes part of someone else’s life.
I agree with the way you describe the Circle “destroying the line between data and privacy.” This is an accurate depiction of exactly what the Circle is doing to it’s employees and, if they’re successful, the world. I think the way Dave Egger’s portrays the link between data and privacy is quite exaggerated from the way these two topics exist today. However, I believe that this is deliberate because his readers are able to see the undertones of this over-exaggerated society in our own society. It is easy to see how we could end up in a situation similar to Mae’s if technology and social media were to continue to advance and grow at the rapid rate that it has. It would be completely overwhelming to live with the pressure of writing down everything you do online and also constantly being surveyed. By this point in the novel, I agree with you that Mae has nearly lost all of her privacy to the Circle, and is having a very difficult clinging to the small amount that she has left, while still attempting to please her superiors and peers. I think that as the story progresses Mae will continue to lose her privacy, and it will become evident exactly how this type of society impacts the people living within it.