#privacyisdead

 Not long ago, privacy was something people took for granted. A conversation stayed between two people. A home address stayed in a phonebook. A bank account number stayed in a vault.

In Dave Eggers, The Circle, Mae Holland is brought into a new world of communication, privacy, and uniformity. TruYou becomes the one way system of communication between all social media sites and basically everything involving your identity. During Mae’s first week employed for the Circle, she is introduced to many new aspects and basically a new world. She becomes well known for her progress within the company and makes new friend as well as maintaining a friendship with her friend Annie who landed her the job. On the other hand, at a seminar the Mae attends, she is introduced to a camera that is going to change the future, a high quality, HD video recorder as small as a sucker, that is fairly inexpensive. The camera introduced to her is placed secretly all over the world, able to collect sound, move, and capture amazing close up video, all while maintaining its almost invisible position. With this news, Mae is captures by this idea and begins to realize that maybe the world IS ever changing and she has been missing out all along. 

 Jonathan Strickland, is well on target with warning people about the dangers of smart phones, the internet, and everyday actions. In his youtube video “The Internet is Watching You,” he describes how and why we receive ads during a quick search on google, and why they are so related to us. Have you ever received email in your spam box about the medicine your doctor prescribes you, or about a weight loss product? Strickland says that its based off of what you have searched in the past and how long you looked at it. 

For example, in the Circle when Mae took the kayak out without permission and assumed that no one was watching her. One of the cameras that had been placed all over the world was actually keeping an eye on her. This compares in today’s society very much as our problems with identity. Many times we assume that we do not have any eyes on us, and that we are not being watched. Privacy was intentionally a word that meant the ability of an individual or group to seclude themselves, or information about themselves, and thereby express themselves selectively, based on a dictionary source. So what happened to privacy? 

Sadly, i believe that the Circle is possibly a nearby future resemblance, and we are the main ones to blame. With crime existing all around us, we inevitably are putting the loss of privacy on ourselves. How about on the local news where they have hidden cameras in Walmarts, intersections, and even in some places restaurants and clubs. How else without these cameras would we spot shoplifters, vandalizers, and other crimes? Even police officers are using these new body cameras to make sure to save their own jobs and lives when something horrible goes down in front of them. Officers are being shamed all because of he said she said debates. So is it truly that we are stealing privacy away from ourselves? This would make sense for the slogan of the Circle, “Privacy is Theft.”

1.  Strickland, Jonathan. "Big Data: The Internet Is Watching You!" YouTube. YouTube, 3 July 2013. Web. 01 May 2015.

2.  Eggers, Dave. The Circle. McSweeney’s. 2013. Print. April 2015.