My husband and I just returned from a much anticipated trip to the Atacama Desert in Chile. I decided long before we left that I wasn’t going to use my mobile phone while we were away. Any exposure to email or social media would be a slippery slope to stress.
I did, however, bring my iPad, as I had a new title to read for my book club. Imagine my surprise when I realized the selection — The Circle by Dave Eggers — was about a world where the proliferation of social media leads to pure transparency. Where privacy is considered theft.
The novel tells the story of an only slightly futuristic company that subsumes the social media channels we know today and fosters a cult-like environment in order to expand its power online and off. Unlike 1984, a novel to which “The Circle” is often compared, most of what’s described in its pages is technically possible (and even actual) today. Its chilling narrative is filled with all the right ingredients: an effective protagonist, irony, romance, danger and a mystery character whose identity we don’t learn until the end. There’s also a good dose of symbolism, including several references to Lucite® acrylic (who happens to be a client of ours) used in the design of the The Circle’s office space. A company that endorses total transparency would naturally choose the clarity of LuciteLux®.
The reader comes to realize the line between productive social media engagement and “Big Brother” is maintained not by the capabilities of technology, but by the decisions of our lawmakers, the influence of our corporations and the will of the people. Anyone who knows me will agree that I am a glass half full kind of person. Plus my livelihood depends on storytelling and authentic communication. But I will admit “The Circle” made me think about the perils of over-sharing and the fragility of privacy. And it emboldened me in my decision to unplug and wait until I was home to bore everyone with my vacation photos.