The Circle Culture - Book Report/Review Example

The Circle Culture The Circle Culture is about a company called Circle. When Holland, a woman who is in her 20s arrives at work the first day, she marvels at the beauty of the campus; the tennis and volleyball courts, the fountain and the children that were in the daycare. The beauty of the campus makes her feel like the campus was heaven. The situation is considered not in the too-distance future (Eggers, n.d.). The wise men that are stated in the book ruling the company are individuals that are living currently. The company demands that everything is done in transparency such that the main slogans used in the company are ‘privacy is theft’ and ‘secret are lies’. In the situation, anonymity is banished and the past of everyone is able to be revealed, the present is able to be shown live through videos and sounds and everything that has been recorded will not be erased. The aim of Circle is to have all aspect of human existence; the love affairs and voting that human belong. There are degrees through which we are becoming into the aspect of the company. The issues that are brought out are already seen in the current situation and people are getting into it. The issue is currently being debated in blogs, tweets and books. The issue of transparency and exposure of oneself is currently seen in the social networks where there is a drive to display oneself. There is also a current drive in searches through Google and Facebook (Eggers, n.d.). This has made our lives to be become part of the sites linked to the argument that is brought out by Eggers. In the Circle, Holland gets a job at asocial media company that combines several operations including Facebook, Twitter, Google, PayPal and other online businesses. The operations that are carried out in the company are those considered to be those that we have currently trust ourselves. The activities that Egger discusses are those we currently involve. Among the interventions is “TruYou”. This shows the degree in which we become part of the company as once one has got into it, the person remain online for the rest of his life. The philosophy that is used in the social media is that of total transparency. When Mae starts work in the company, she enjoys the new world that she is working. She is happy with the work as it shows her how the life is to be in the coming times. She ends up suggesting that the account of the company should be made mandatory to everyone by the government so that there is increased voter turnout. Her friend who was close to the three wise men introduced Mae to the Circle. Mae begins working even though she has a low customer experience and does not responding appropriately to customer requests. She later becomes part of the job as she enjoys the experience and using social media. This shows the degree in which she becomes part of it after getting into it and knowing how to effectively use it. Mae is eager in competition with the others and she earns a record score in the first day and she later becomes champion in the company. This shows the degree in which she becomes part of the job with the eagerness. She becomes transparent as the people in the Circle and is connected for the broadcasting of her walking move. She becomes part of the media and for instance, she is able to be more transparent through turning off the audio but the camera is still on. The degree of participation of Mae also increases. She portrays the degree in which we are in the social media and the transparency that increases. She is not able to resist the new upcoming and she thinks that every electronic demand is delicious. The situation applies to many as everything that comes new into the market and the demand is high is always thought to be delicious and finer than the others that were used at first. Despite the success that she has achieved in the Circle, there is nothing that is able to prevent her from a downfall. She encounters Kalden. Everyone in the organization lives in the light of transparency but Kalden comes in from the shadows. Everyone that works in the Circle have the name traced but Kalden’s name cannot be traced anywhere. Everyone who is in the Circle is young and aggressive but Kalden has gray hair but looks young. This shows the way the devil comes in a different way and the transparency that they lack. When Kalden meets Mae for the second time, she follows him down the long corridors and also through underground tunnels without a proper reason. What she observes in this netherworld is a metallic red box which was the size of a bus, enfolded in limbs of “shiny silver pipes.” Kalden expresses to her that the box stores the involvements of the Transparent Man, who for five years has noted everything he has seen and have been able to hear. Kalden makes some excuse for the box’s huge size, but his nominal clarification is ridiculous. There just occurs to be a mattress in a recess, where Mae and Kalden have sex she thrills as he breathes “fire into her ear.” Later Kalden will say the Circle is in fact a “totalitarian nightmare,” as if a reader did not know this from the start. This is also an indication of the degree in which privacy can be evil as Kalden was not transparent to Mae on what was in the box. Mae has a boyfriend from her previous times, Mercer, her main rival. Mercer takes hours thinking of the means she would be able to use in unsubscribing to mailing lists without affecting or hurting the feelings of anyone and would like to do it in private. He finds that the digital bingeing of the world leaves him resonating and reduced and that there is what he referees to as ‘this new neediness that permeates everything" (Eggers, n.d.). In the situation, Franzen is the one who Mercer might best get associated to and get along; Mercer feels that he has entered in what he refers to as some reflection world where the dorkiest shit is totally dominant, that the world has fortified itself". And it is Mercer's fate when Mae tracks him down in hiding using Circle technology that furnishes the novel with its most kinetic passage of satire. The situation shows how once one gets into a situation of transparency that is not easily to attain privacy. Summary on how the ending of the story can be written Eggers writes the end of the story with Mae stranded after she becomes wasted and does not know the actual steps that she should take. There is also an early scene where Mae could have been made a rounded character. This would make us worried about her. In the first day that she comes to work, all her information in the digital devices that she had is transferred to the system of the Circle. During the time when she is introduced into the job, she is asked whether she was willing to hand over her old laptop for recycling but she hesitates and says goodbye. If there was a need to pause that narration, it would be after she says goodbye. She thought that the laptop that was to be recycled held all her private information. She forgets that the company had all the information about her for transparency. In ending the narration, I would make her hold the laptop that was containing her private information and also observing her profile on all information that she had made transparent to the Circle. This would show linger on what it means to surrender. In this situation, it will show the surrender that she had and the will that she would have in giving her laptop after she realizes that all her information was with the Circle and there was nothing private in her dealings and life. She would know the disadvantages that she had by making her life transparent and nothing being only known to herself. The ending of the narration could have shown much about the impact of computers and transparency that is involved in computers and their adjustments. The ending of the story would also bring and bring out clearly the balance of psychological credibility with the ludicrousness of his satirical flourishes. He did not make his characters to behave in that way. Rewriting the conclusion would be focused at bringing out the balance. Privacy in the age of transparency Privacy is not theft. Privacy and transparency should go hand in hand. Transparency brings the opportunity and an obligation for corporation and companies that one works but it is not always an opportunity or an obligation of individuals. Privacy is also important as individuals have the obligation to hold and protect the private information that they have. In the Circle, Mae needed to be transparent to the company but this did not need her to give all her information. This has big implications for companies. People and institutions interacting with firms have unprecedented access to information about corporate behavior, operations, and performance. Armed with new tools to find information, a variety of stakeholders now scrutinize the firm like never before, informing others and organizing collective responses. Mae gave information to the company forgetting that she needed some aspects of privacy in her doings. The thoughts that she had of social media and other online services keeping her transparent turns to be not as she expects the level of transparency she gives could help her. She uses transparency to be true worthy but forgets of the actions when she meets Kalden. Privacy is not theft and Mae is not considered a victim of the situation but a dull villain. The motivations that she had were using her transparency in getting the highest ratings, moving into the center of the organization but exhibit no complex desire for power. She only had a desire for the approval of the Wise Men. She is considered a high school mean girl than an evil opponent. The situation here is that Egger wanted to show through Mae that evil that occur in the future will look more like the trivial Mae than it will the hovering dark eye. A welcome upshot of increased scrutiny is that business integrity is on the rise. Companies need to do well and act with integrity not just to secure a healthy business environment, but for their own sustainability and competitive advantage. Firms that exhibit ethical values and transparency have discovered that they can be more competitive and more profitable. Transparency is no longer simply an obligation to report information to an external party like a regulator or an institutional investor; it is a current competitive force and a vital requirement for building productive relationships with stakeholders. In the book, when Mae gets into the Circle, she is eager to keep transparent and to do things out of transparency. She is able to become a champion in the company through the transparency that she holds. The right to privacy has been articulated in international law and in some national laws. The right to transparency, freedom of information while unavailable in international law has increasingly become encoded in national laws as a means of holding governments to account and tackling the imbalance of power between states and citizens. The rights that one has on privacy and transparency should be considered in the companies such that they become transparent but their privacy is also taken into consideration. In Circle, there was holding of a high degree of transparency but there was also no consideration of privacy of others such as Kalden. Privacy is important in the aspects of work despite the need to hold transparency in all firms. Read More