I recently read a mediocre thriller by Dave Eggers called
The Circle. It's not a good book, but the premise is timely and intriguing. A young woman gets a job at a Facebook-like California social media corporation whose ultimate aim is 100% "transparency," not of the company, but of its billions of customers. Users are urged to "go clear," which means to commit their every activity to film and on-line posting. The rationale is that mutual universal visibility will promote an honest society. "Privacy is secrecy," and secrecy means shame, and why do anything shameful? Allowing the world full viewing privileges to your life will prompt you to behave well. When we all behave well, we have utopia.
Sadly, Eggers fails to develop this premise into a plot with the slightest degree of nuance, complexity, or believability, partly by refusing to let any character raise the argument on behalf of privacy that will occur to most readers. No one in the book objects that a loss of privacy is also a loss of intimacy, since while privacy hides shame, it also allows specialness. (Even the young woman's ex-boyfriend, who is adamantly opposed to the intrusive "Circle," does not hit on this objection.) It also makes no sense that none of the Circle's thousands of young-genius employees questions the
