Michaela Salamone (Post #5)
To be honest, when I first picked up this book I was actually quite hesitant to jump right into it. It looked pretty long and boring, like a book my mother would be interested in. I had heard of Dave Eggers before, but I had never gotten the chance to read any of his books. To my surprise, I really enjoyed
The Circle. It gave me a completely different perspective on technology all together. It was interesting to see the astronomical effects technology had made on Mae's life, along with the other Circlers. Even though the events The Circle's technology caused was in my opinion, very far-fetched, it still conveyed that present-day issue we all notice today: Technology is taking over our lives.
People are becoming so consumed with their cell phones- with Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and more. Every day, more and more of peoples lives are being posted all over the internet for everyone to see. I wonder things like,
Is anything private anymore?
I feel as though I know so much about other people-people I don't even know personally, just because of social media. We may not be getting filmed from a live camera tied around our necks, but we do post a lot of things to social media, which is out there for anyone to see. This novel really made me want to "unplug" myself from the internet, and to appreciate the freedom of privacy.
I can't avoid the irony that we are doing an English project about this book in blog form that the whole internet can see. As I type this comment from my iPad, I have twitter and Facebook open in two other tabs. I agree with you Michaela that this book made me think about how much I use social medias and display my life for others too see. However, I do not really think this book is that far fetched. Social medias are consuming our society and ten years from now could be as invasive as they were in Egger's novel.
ReplyDeleteI agree with both of you about how this book has opened my eyes. This can only raise the question: Was this Dave Eggers' intention? Did he write this book to provoke the very thoughts we are having after reading it? I think he did. And I agree with what Mike said about the plot not being totally far fetched. A man named Jordan Belfort, aka the 'real' wolf of wall street, once said, "We never really crossed the line of our standards by too much, we did it little by little, each time adjusting our standards so that it never really seemed like we made a big change." I feel that society is doing that with technology, we are developing newer and newer things from drones that can kill dozens of people with the literally the click of a button, to invasive social media sites. In the next few decades, I think we will all be surprised with where our technology has taken us.
ReplyDeleteZach, I think that without a doubt Eggers wanted to shock us into reevaluating our own use of social media and technology with this cautionary fable. I agree that our society is pushing the limits of invading privacy with new technologies and innovative social media sites little by little. However, I think Eggers also wanted us to take note in the change in people as well as in technology. People are losing the personal touch and only look to please ‘followers’ on social media sites with airbrushed and filtered pictures or witty tweets. People think that if they ‘retweet’ or ‘like’ something that it will make a difference when it reality it could not be more superficial and is only a surface level human interaction.
ReplyDeletep.s. I loved the Wolf of Wall street reference
I agree with all three of you. Thinking about how technology invades our privacy i couldn't help but think about the recent controversy over how the government has been spying on us through phone taps. This made me realize how people are losing their sense of tradition and what is really important in the world. Mike, nice analogy with the ipad, i agree.
ReplyDeleteI agree, Although it was science fiction, I think it touched on some important topics that are relevant and apply in todays world. We lose our boundaries as long as we do it in small steps. Social media is toxic but we fail to realize it as long as the progressions are small enough; they get disguised as "updates" and we blindly go ahead and dig ourselves deeper and deeper into the social media rabbit hole. Only a matter of time before the damage is irreversible.
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