The Community of The Circle As A Spectacle In Itself

                                                            The Circle

                                                                            Dave Eggers

                Technology is a plague and The Circle embodies future technology. In The Circle by Dave Eggers, every worker or media consumer is given knowledge through Seechange, which is the company’s new technology that enables every person to see everything and know exactly what’s going on through its entirety of transparency with its little cameras and what not. Debord puts it in The Society Of The Spectacle, that “the spectacle is not a collection of images; it is a social relation between people that is mediated by images.” Mae puts her input in her relationship with other people through this media by concentrating on no longer her personal life, but on social media itself. Zings and smiles which are a person’s input on things that Mae and other workers in Customer Experience face is full transparency and absolutely no privacy at all.

            In The Circle, we have a community which is the commodity of a kind of spectacle which is not only a workplace but a community alienated from anything old such as the consumption of laptops and smartphones including computers. It also alienates the main character, Mae from herself and her personal life with Kalden who is her new lover after Francis. Kalden reveals that there will be more suicides for the sake of privacy and is actually Ty who is a wise man who averts them from the apocalypse of social media which is the community of the circle that should not be completed according to Ty or Kalden, that “the spectacle presents itself simultaneously as society itself, as a part of society, and as a means of unification. As a part of society, it is the focal point of all vision and all consciousness. But due to the very fact that this sector is separate, it is in reality the domain of delusion and false consciousness: the unification it achieves is nothing but an official language of universal separation,” which is the whole novel’s purpose. To show us that some people like Mercer may revolt in universal separation; actually, millions would disagree and make it a universal separation of not wanting transparency in their lives, and that is exactly what it means. What it is though, is that privacy should be kept too although Eggers captures the near future of the world of technology. For Mae she represents false consciousness because when she is being watched she says that she would have behaved if she were not being watched stealing the kayak without a life jacket which was seen on camera according to Seechange.

            “The things the spectacle presents as eternal are based on change, and must change as their foundations change. The spectacle is totally dogmatic, yet it is incapable of arriving at any really solid dogma. Nothing stands still for it. This instability is the spectacle’s natural condition, but it is completely contrary to its natural inclination.” This quote represents the fact that when the company sees change with everchanging roles that people play in the business community, such as being promoted by the reputation of the Circle, we see that change throughout the novel. We also see that this is why The Circle enterprise is incomplete. Because Seechange is the contrary to nature’s natural inclination.

            Also, according to Debord, “the real movement that transforms existing conditions has been the dominant social force since the bourgeoisie’s victory within the economic sphere, and this dominance became visible once that victory was translated onto the political plane. The development of productive forces shattered the old production relations, and all static order crumbled. Everything that was absolute became historical,” such as laptops, computers and smartphones for example which has taken over what is absolute such as playtime outside and letter writing and the use of the telephone.

            Everything it seems has a hierarchy where writing letters is at the bottom of the pyramid whereas the iPhone, iPad and social media is at the top of the pyramid where it reigns as a social need instead of people being normal and talking to each other. The technology today is like a nuclear era where everyone has to have it in order to communicate also a digital error whereas the error is the technology that distorts the reality of what is really going on. It protrudes as a national disease and its causes are for evil especially when technology tracks people down. Technology is like a widespread pandemic of either Covid-19 or the Spanish flu call it what you will.

            What we are getting at here is that technology feeds off the lives of people like in The Circle where it is like a quiet plague of technology that plagues the mind and ensnares and entices the entirety of a person’s social life such as Mae’s. She herself is infected by this nuclear error, or era of this technological plague and so are her fellow circlers.

            A major political example is that of QAnon. What makes them like the Circlers in Mae’s job so gullible? Well, in the novel, we can infer that it is the drive to think that The Circle as a company along with their fellow circlers are doing good for only the good of humanity by introducing things such as Seechange. Little do they know that this is an invasion of privacy.

            “No trust is possible in the digital panopticon—nor is it necessary. As an act of faith, it is growing obsolete in view of readily available information. The society of information is discrediting all belief, all faith. Trust makes relationships to others possible even when one does not know them well. The possibility of quickly and easily obtaining information damages trust. As such, the contemporary crisis of trust is also medially conditioned. Digital networking makes it so much easier to obtain information that trust, as a social praxis, has less and less meaning. Trust is yielding to control. It follows, then, that our society of transparency is approaching the society of surveillance.” What I mean is that when Seechange is adapted to the festoon and infestation of technology, trust is only gained when Seechange makes those same changes out of the blue. Because of The Circle, trust is gained and knowledge is surveilled and can always be contained. But because of The Circle like what had happened to Annie in the novel, we can infer that the plateau of technology has to slow down before there are any suicides like Mercer’s or anyone who collapses into a coma like Annie herself.

            But can the social circle of media harm us? In The Circle, transparency is a must and conditions our behaviors. The only problem that The Circle company faces is that some things must be kept private or else, pandemonium. It is like Pandora’s box in which some evils must be kept to oneself.

            These commodities leave us to ponder, what program it is that is storing all this information about us and how to track down the insubordinate information, meaning the information that is leftover of our mistakes on the internet. When information is deleted and sent to some big technology info program such as Facebook that keeps us and everything in it intact.

            Some of the conditions of privacy are not that very well thought of or aren’t even very well thought of at all to the extent of who gets to keep this information that we delete. The fact that in The Circle, everything should be recorded is absurdity and utter complete nonsense, but we discover that surveillance can be good for the world and that surveillance is another way of handling not only crime but absurd terrorism at its worst. Surveillance can be good for tracking down murderers, rapists, thieves and missing children.

            But why surveillance when you can have moments that are cherished to yourself? The reason why somethings should be left private is what our other character, Annie who is Mae’s best friend represents in the novel. It is the fact that her parents are seen doing absurd things at a wedding which are not supposed to happen that are embarrassing, which is why we should keep some private moments to ourselves such as using the bathroom.

            “Where information is readily and rapidly obtained, the social system switches over from trust to control and transparency. In so doing, it observes the logic of efficiency. Every click that one makes is stored. Every step that one takes can be traced. We leave digital tracks everywhere. Our digital life is reflected, point for point, in the Net. The possibility of logging each and every aspect of life is replacing trust with complete control. Big Brother has receded the throne to Big Data. The total recording of life is bringing the society of transparency to completion.” This quote can be likened to Eamon Bailey’s quote that the circle must come to a completion. Dave Eggers’ The Circle embodies the future of advanced technology. The whole point is that technology is a plague and is an error in this age but a very fast pacing progressive error.

                                                            Works Cited                                                                      

            Debord, Guy. Society of the Spectacle. Bread and Circuses Publishing, 2012.

            Han, Byung-Chul. In the swarm: Digital prospects. Vol. 3. MIT Press, 2017.