Underlying argument - the end of privacy and dataveillance.

While Eggers uses Mae to demonstrate the downfalls of transparency, he also incorporates the idea of privacy and being observed as underlying themes throughout the novel. David Lyon talks about "the end of privacy" and dataveillance in his article "Surveillance, power and everyday life." The end of privacy has arisen in the past decades because of the abundance of technology that has emerged. As Lyon states, "with the rise of technology and surveillance, it is nearly impossible to have privacy...online actions are tracked" (458), privacy as narrated in The Circle poses similar issues. This is the exact problem that impede Mae's life. As she first-handedly encounters a lack of privacy, her relationships become tense and she finds herself changing her behavior. In addition, because her live camera feed is available for anybody to see, society is also affected. This is the idea of "dataveillance" that Lyons also brings up in his argument. As described, so much data is available through new technologies, that the personal data allows the technology to surveil the users (457); this mirrors Eggers argument about everybody having the access to information. The live camera feed that Mae wears is recording information about herself and her activities, then providing it to the access of the world. Anybody and everybody can watch Mae's activities and learn about her life through this technology. Overall, both of these underlying arguments radiate in the larger idea of transparency. They all contribute to the idea of technologies providing too much information and ultimately being detrimental to those affected by them.

Works Cited

David Lyon, "Surveillance, power and everyday life," in R. Mansell et al. eds., The Oxford Handbook of Information and Communication Technologies (2007).