Today we live in a time in which so much happens through technology. Have you ever felt like someone is watching you? Have you felt that you lack privacy in your everyday life? Do you think that technology is becoming something that we cannot live without in a way that is detrimental to the human race?
The Film the Circle is one that you should watch. Based on the novel by Dave Eggers ,The Circle follows the main character Mae Holland as she questions what she wants in her life. Throughout the book decisions were made that I was not at all expecting and to be honest by the end I felt quite betrayed.
More than anything I believe that this film is a commentary on how the world functions and is seeming to head with the technological achievements that have been made. Facebook in many ways knows most of our lives. It now knows the amount of days we have been friends with individuals online, to the point that it remembers friend anniversaries (a date I had not even remembered). Friend anniversaries (like really) I don’t even think that was a thing before facebook came along. Also ads and how easily they pop up in our feed, one moment you’re looking at stickers of John F. Kennedy ,and the next your entire feed is filled with John F. Kennedy stickers to buy. To me that most definitely feels like being watched.
Google in a way can maybe even be scarier. Google has so many answers, data, phone numbers, and etc. I remember when I was in middle school and my parents had an address book where we would search up who ever we needed to call. I remember that we used to have a house phone. Today the only places I have seen that don’t carry cellphones are restaurants and businesses. We seem as a society to have stopped using our memory. No longer do we remember phone numbers like we used to, instead we depend on the contacts book that are at our disposal in cell phones. We also have a need to inform the world what we are doing at some of the strangest times.
I cannot imagine a snapchat that would never turn off. Today we post and record small clips of our lives and likes. We have, to a certain degree, a choice, but what would happen when one individual did not turn off those ten seconds in their snapchat. When it kept recording and didn’t stop. Would we watch? Would we turn it off? Or like the cellphones would we slowly adjust to a society in which choices on individual lives began to no longer exist?