Spoiler alert: these pictures are all real.
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| BBC News Headquarters, London |
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| Google Headquarters, Dublin |
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| Corus Quay, Toronto |
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| Google, Tel Aviv |
I know for a fact I would-- not only are these cool per se, but their companies seem to be actual beacons of good. Take Google's motto, for example: "Don't Be Evil". It's quirky, independent, alternative. It embodies all they do (it's even embedded in its search algorithm). They also emphasize personal and communal development, by providing opportunities for growth both in and out of the office space. All in all, it sounds perfect. Just like The Circle was in those first chapters. The question is, when did The Circle stop being good?
It was painted as a utopia, a perfect paradise-- the ultimate company. However, there must've been somewhere at which the reader was funneled into believing that the organization was in fact evil. Was it when Mae went clear? Was it before? Had the company been racking up the negatives until they blew up?
Individually, the little programs that The Circle has (SeeChange, for example) are not bad in themselves: the little cameras "would cut crime rates down by 70, 80 percent in any city where we have meaningful saturation" (p67). Furthermore, the OuterCircle, Zing and InnerCircle feeds that Mae uses to communicate echo Facebook, Twitter, and messaging platforms that we already have, and LuvLuv can be compared to the advanced version of Tinder.
The point of this being-- we already have this technology and online prowess. The Circle as a company merely englobed these phenomena we subscribe to and put it on steroids under various slogans: "secrets are lies", "in this short life, why shouldn't everyone see what they want to see?", why shouldn't everyone have equal access to all the experiences available in this world?", "privacy is theft", amongst others. These aren't that different from Google's motto, but what makes The Circle so evil to our eyes?
Perhaps The Circle lost all its credibility (to the reader) at the point where collective enterprise interfered and was valued over individual liberties by trying to get everyone to give up their intrinsic essence in favor of the company's network of shared experience. You can say, then, that The Circle only stopped being good when the obsession with oversharing got to the point of losing one's identity to the collective. I think this is echoed throughout the book, but we have forgotten it: oversharing is losing your own identity, surrendering all that makes you yours in order to adopt the philosophy of a larger body that doesn't necessarily reflect our own mantra.
And that cannot be compensated by quirky architecture and office space.
This was an awesome post! The way you tied the pictures in at the beginning to your last sentence which you included so it seemed like it was an afterthought was great. I also really liked what you choose as your topic of this blog, because the question of why The Circle is different from something like Google is a very valid one.
ReplyDeleteHey Graciela! I agree with wanting to work at one of those places- they look a lot more fun than working in a cubicle in an office building. I also see what you're saying about oversharing being the source of our issues with The Circle. In my opinion, you're completely correct. The problem with The Circle isn't some of the actual ideas, but rather the way that people use them. Of course towards the end The Circle is demanding people to overshare through their what seems like millions of different variaties of social media use.
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