On Social Media and ‘The Circle’

I’ve been thinking about this article from Rare the past week. The article discusses the trailer for the upcoming Tom Hanks/Emma Watson/John Boyega movie The Circle. The movie is an adaptation of a novel about a company like “Google or Facebook on a light dose of steroids.”

The trailer and article at Rare capture a lot of my hesitations and fears about social media and the growing power of the tech world. The article at Rare also reveals a significant and self-admitted limitation of civil libertarianism; the ideology has no category for a consented deprivation of rights, which is exactly what The Circle is wrestling with. Ultimately it is the social consequences of embracing slogans like “‘secrets are lies,’ ‘sharing is caring’ and ‘privacy is theft'” that make our social media and the story The Circle Orwellian. The data mining is just a tool that assists the socially mandated perfect behavior. “Do you think you behave better or worse when you are being watched?”