Circles
Back in August, I was assigned to read a book called The Circle for one of my classes, New Media Technology and Its Impact on the Future of Advertising, Marketing and PR (NMT for short). The class was about exactly that, all of the cool new technology being discovered and how it would come to affect the field that we would hopefully all enter in 6 months. I’m currently in part 2 of this class, Branding of Me, where we spent our final class of the semester going to see the movie theater premiere of The Circle, bringing the year full circle, if you will.
The Circle is a book that I would highly encourage everyone to read – millennial teens who are glued to social media, dads who love to whip out a Google search every time there’s a discrepancy in a conversation, and even grandmothers who are addicted to Facebook – because it portrays the shocking realization of the potential that our society has with the capability of our technology today. Now, it’s fiction, so naturally there are a few unrealistic parts, for the sake of the story, but overall, it’s pretty alarming.
The Circle is about a young woman, Mae, who gets a job at a company called The Circle, a Google-esque establishment that strives for perfection and truth by whatever means necessary. These means include everything from putting real-time cameras around public places (so that terrorists and elected officials can always be held responsible for their actions) to wearing a personal camera around your neck for “transparency” (a concept very similar to going “live” on Facebook). The story progresses into how this technology brainwashes the circlers and deprives them of human interaction and adventure, eventually culminating in a huge disaster (that I won’t spoil for you).
I got a pretty big wake-up call when reading The Circle. While I wouldn’t say that I am addicted, I do love my phone as much as the next person and can sometimes find myself wasting more time than I would like staring at that tiny screen. The scary part about the circle was that there wasn’t any technology used that was outlandish or unrealistic relative to what we have now. It showed how quickly we get caught up in an invention that seems cool or fun, and how quicker still that same invention can be corrupted and used for the violation of our privacy without our even realizing it.
Technology brings my family together. Living across an ocean from my cousins and grandparents becomes infinitely easier when I can Skype them and see their faces immediately. It also creates tools for science and makes medicine and treatment significantly more feasible. Technology gives us the ability to take thousands of photos and keep them organized to recall at a moment’s notice. It even keeps us safe. GPS technology gives us directions when we get lost, and Find My Friends can locate my roommates in seconds when we lose each other on a Friday night.
But all of these come with a cost, and it’s a cost that I think some of us don’t always see. When we agree to all of these things, we are agreeing to give up some of our rights to privacy. We aren’t the only ones with access to these pictures or our precise geographic location, and that’s pretty scary to think about. Which is why I think everyone should read The Circle. It gives a look into what the world could become if we let technology get out of hand and fall into that of people who could use it for bad rather than good. And that is what I think I will take away from this year with NMT the most – technology can be a great tool, but we have to remember to still be a human and enjoy the sunshine and adventure and other human interaction, that there is more to life than a like on Instagram or getting the perfect profile picture, and if you have a little empathy for others you’ll get a whole lot more out of it.
