Transparent In ‘The Real World’

Excerpts from pages 62 and 63 of The Circle:

Here, Mae and her bosses are talking about SeeChange, the Circle’s new project whose ultimate goal is to achieve total transparency. They have set up (and continue to do so) cameras in random places around the world. These cameras record in high quality and sustain most weather conditions. They are designed so as to blend in with the environment and thus remain unnoticed by most people. What this cameras record is everyday life in all corner of the worlds, the footage available as a live stream to anyone who wishes to see it.

This is their vision: If they manage to achieve total transparency and in this way close the Circle, all crime and wrongdoing would be minimized and people would live more honest lives, having every second recorded. “What about privacy,” you ask? Never heard of this concept before.

Going back to the real world of non-fiction now… In big cities such as London, CCTV cameras are almost everywhere, some of which are even available to view live. Sure, they’re there for our own protection but what will happen if someone who shares the Circle’s ideology gains possession of all this footage? Of course, transparency is far from something that’s solely being done to us. In fact, most people are willing participants. Social media platforms and the constant photo sharing (250 million photos are uploaded to Facebook every day) they entail is definitely a step in eliminating privacy.

(image source)

The idea of complete transparency lies at the centre of The Circle but it is not the idea itself that sends chills through the reader. It is the question of whether we are not to an extent already transparent – or heading in that direction.

Crowdsourcing or advertising? Both.

The Circle, page 374: The Circle has created a tool called SoulSearch. This app is meant to find anybody on Earth with the help of other uses of The Circle. In a demonstration of SoulSearch Mae and more than a billion circlers use this tool to locate a known criminal:

What Mae is doing in the excerpt above is a case of crowdsourcing. The crowd in the above case was The Circle’s own users but in reality, people tend to use several different social platforms to reach as many people as possible. Crowdsourcing is the practice of gathering information or using services contributed by many people that normally move in different circles (pun intended? Your guess). Crowdsourcing is a term most commonly associated with an online activity but of course it exists in an offline form as well. It has started with people helping out others or coming together for a good cause. It can also be used to raise money, in which case the term for it is crowdfunding.

Apart from its traditional role, crowdsourcing has played an integral part in advertising lately. There are different ways in which crowdsourcing is used in advertising. The very first stage of an ad campaign involves brainstorming and the gathering of ideas. Participants are asked to share their ideas on sites such as Userfarm. Sometimes all the company is looking for is ideas, other times they submit briefs (usually online), to which participants respond not only with the idea for it but the winner (and only the winner) also then gets to execute the idea. Perhaps the most common form of crowdsourcing that companies tend to use is contents. Here, participants execute the entire idea and create the ad (video, poster, photographs), submitting it to the company in hope of winning the (usually monetary) award.

Social media such as Twitter and Instagram have been used extensively by companies to promote their brand name. They ask their followers to share their images of themselves using certain products or services, usually using a common hashtag. Sometimes this is done to win awards, other times simply to get a retweet or a follow from the company’s account. In this way, every participant advertises products and helps spread the brand name.

The Circle

The Circle is a novel by American writer Dave Eggers. It is a work of fiction set in a technologically enhanced world. I should say, an even more technologically enhanced world than the one we currently find ourselves in. The technology itself is advanced but what makes The Circle an interesting read is the widespread use of social media. Not social media platforms but a platform. The Circle is a new form of social media, its newness being in not its specificity on one aspect of information sharing, rather it is a combined version of all our existing social media forms – Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter and the like have all bowed down to the great and all-encompassing Circle.

The story follows Mae, a recent graduate, who has managed to get a job millions would do anything for at the infamous Circle. Her job is to answer the users’ queries and help them with any problem they might have. Nothing out of the ordinary, really. What makes this job so desirable though, is The Circle’s environment. Wanting only what’s best for their employees (referred to as ‘circlers’), The Circle creators have created a whole campus – complete with shops, restaurants, a gym and even bedrooms – all at the disposal of every circle

Throughout the book the goal of The Circle becomes clear: to complete the circle, to close it. They aim towards full transparency, everybody knowing as much as possible about everyone, one of their slogans being Privacy Is Theft.

At first not fully participating in the social side of the company, Mae is soon swayed by them and becomes a fully committed circler – sharing all aspects of her life with the world. She goes so far as to become fully transparent. This means that Mae wears a camera around her neck all day but for a few hours at night. She is allowed to turn the microphone off for 3 minutes for toilet breaks, while the camera stays on (facing the stall door). The video feed is live and accessible to everyone. So communication flows both ways, she wears a bracelet on her arm, which displays her viewer’s comments, not unlike the Twitter @ feed.

“He [one of the creators of The Circle] truly believes that openness, that complete and uninterrupted access among all humans will help the world. That this is what the world’s been waiting for, the moment when every soul is connected.”

The Circle (2013), p. 404

Not seeing the negative side of complete transparency, Mae becomes the face of The Circle and its beliefs. Many people formerly close to her begin warning her about the terrible possible outcomes of such an extreme view. Among them is Mae’s ex boyfriend Mercer. Once he realizes Mae won’t change her stance on the matter, he decides to ‘get off the grid’ and escape the cameras that have been placed everywhere by the corporation. In an demonstration of The Circle’s new program designed to catch fugitives Mae decides to use this to find Mercer. In trying to escape the people and cameras chasing him, Mercer finds himself in the midst of a highly televised car chase and tragically drives off a bridge and dies. Slightly discouraged by this turn of events, Mae picks herself up quickly and more determined than ever finds herself with brand new ideas of how to ensure complete transparency and with it, the closing of the circle.

This book is a work of fiction, yes. Based on reality, however, it deals with several issues we might be facing in the not-so-distant future.

How much truth is there in The Circle? Stay tuned.