Cameras distributed everywhere by an online network make every moment of life public – that was the world in the book «Der Circle». Can it get any worse? Sure, says author Dave Eggers.
Dave Eggers couldn’t have picked a better moment to publish the sequel to his novel “The Circle” about an all-powerful Internet corporation.
We are still a long way from the world without privacy described there. But debates about the impact of technology on our lives and control by the online giants boil almost every day.
A Facebook failure recently ripped the subsidiaries Instagram and WhatsApp from the network for six hours – could there be a better argument against the market power of a corporation? After criticism, Apple stopped an attempt to search for child pornography on iPhones in compliance with data protection regulations. And Facebook was forced to put the development of an Instagram version for ten to twelve year olds on hold.
“The Circle” came out in 2013. In it, the leaders of a dominant online network – called Circle – were obsessed with the idea that everything in the world must be public. All over the world cameras are distributed that continuously transmit a live stream to the network. One reason: if everyone has to assume that they are seen all the time, there will be no more crimes.
First politicians and then other people start wearing cameras all the time. «Secrets are lies. Sharing is healing. Privacy is theft », are the principles of the Circle. Exaggerated? Maybe. But also unthinkable?
In the sequel – “Every” – Eggers takes up the story again a few years later. The Circle has bought up an online retail giant “named after a South American jungle” – if that’s not a reference to Amazon. The resulting mega-corporation is called Every.
And has even more influence on life. Customers let the artificial intelligence in their wristbands control their everyday life. The slightest misconduct is immediately publicly denounced. We are even working on software for the transfer of senses, which is intended to make the feelings of others tangible.
The people at Every scan their possessions for digital copies and destroy the items. As if reality wanted to imitate art, a few days ago Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg suggested scanning physical things for a planned new virtual world – the “Metaverse”.
Not everyone is happy with this “mixture of well-intentioned utopianism and pseudo-fascist behavioral conformity”. At first glance, “Every” begins almost exactly like “The Circle”: A young woman enters the company’s headquarters for the first time. But while Mae Holland stumbles naively into the Circle world in the first book, the omens are now different. Delaney Wells plans to hire Every to destroy the company from the inside.
Their plan: to feed Every with ideas that affect people’s lives so deeply and clash with their values that they rebel against the company. But things turn out differently, of course: even software that can recognize whether the person you’re talking to is lying to you is enthusiastically received. “There must be a point where the bullshit gets too much,” Delaney exclaims in a moment. Only that she has to resignedly state: “Nothing goes too far.” The question now is whether Delaney’s campaign might only make Every more powerful and indestructible.
He’s playing out his worst fears in the books, which could be expected from the tech companies, Eggers told Bloomberg Businessweek magazine. He is particularly concerned that the people themselves become accomplices in their constant observation.
“I do not think that most people understand what an inhibiting change in our species it is – overwhelming, constant surveillance that one cannot escape,” emphasized the writer. This evolution makes us less interesting and submits to technology.
This need to warn against total surveillance actually permeates both “The Circle” and “Every”. And also the fear that people will accept this because it initially supposedly makes their lives safer and more comfortable.
Eggers takes the scenarios to extremes, like Delaney, he wants to shake up. And while, following the recent resistance to the market power of the technology giants, it seems unlikely that history will follow the course it has drawn – the technical possibilities for this will almost certainly be available at some point.
Dave Eggers: Every, translated by: Klaus Timmermann, Ulrike Wasel, Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 592 pages, 25.00 euros (e-book 19.99 euros), ISBN 978-3-462-00112-9