The Circle Skewers Google, Facebook, Twitter

theodp writes "This week's NY Times Magazine cover story, We Like You So Much and Want to Know You Better, is an adaptation from The Circle, the soon-to-be-published novel by Dave Eggers which tells the tale of Mae Holland, a young woman who goes to work at an omnipotent technology company and gets sucked into a corporate culture that knows no distinction between work and life, public and private. The WSJ calls it a The Jungle for our own times. And while Eggers insists he wasn't thinking of any one particular company, the NYT excerpt evokes memories of Larry Page's you-will-be-social edict and suggests what the end-game for Google Glass might look like."

And this is surprising?

[segin]

Social media breeds the lifestyle where privacy is just putting clothes on; all else is fair game. Although, I do use Facebook and Google+ myself, I'm careful what I post

Re:And this is surprising?

[icebike]

Watch the mod army attack this with knives.... They have to, it hits too close to home.

Becoming the norm.

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately, not having some sort of public profile is becoming a detriment.

I was at a job fair and I was told by the recruiter for IT that I needed a LinkedIN profile because they did all their recruiting their. First, I restrained myself from asking, "WTF are you doing here , then?!"

I responded that I'm uncomfortable with social media.

He responded that LinkedIN is nothing like Facebook where you have people posting on your page.

He didn't get the whole privacy concerns.

I went home, gritted my teeth and created my LinkedIN profile. And now, a very large portion of my life is up there - our working life is the largest and a very important aspect of our lives, after all. And considering how judgmental, cruel and snobbish employers are (I worked for a while as a minimum wage laborer during the hardest time during the meltdown) and the fact an electronic profile gives no indication of my personality (and no opportunity to address someone's concerns about something), I am afraid I am probably going to end up back as a laborer - a very well educated laborer.

Things are all automated and depersonalized now. You have machines making the decisions and people trusting the machines. We are turning into a dystopian "future" that'd make a Nebula Award jealous.

Yeah except...

[sanitycrumbling]

The Jungle is still happening in real life, in real factories. Maybe not here in the USA, but in many other places. It's sort of offensive / ridiculous to compare the two. "No work life balance while making $125,000 a year" is not the same as sweatshop slave labor, and it's silly to compare the two.

Re:Becoming the norm.

[ebno-10db]

You have machines making the decisions and people trusting the machines.

The disease originated with MBA's and mindless bureaucrats, but has now become an epidemic. People who confuse mindless, only occasionally correct and rarely useful correlations, or figures of merit based on formulas drawn from someone's unwashed posterior, with actual judgments of reality. Interestingly, it's often technical people who are most skeptical of these things. Actually understanding the technology will do that.

Situation normal for badly managed US companies

[dbIII]

knows no distinction between work and life, public and private

It's about time that somebody called attention to "we own you" management that want full on slavery but with less responsibility to the slaves than the old fashioned kind. All that shit like making employees wear recording devices and sacking them for what they get up to in private after the Christmas party (getting rid of the women and not the men - assigning the blame Taliban style), really needs to be brought out into the sunshine. Ordinary office or sales employees shouldn't have to put up with the sort of control that people in the military know to expect and get something in return for that loss of liberty.

Re:Becoming the norm.

[DNS-and-BIND]

And then about ten minutes after that, vote for an increase in the free money. And then another increase, because after all we are in the majority now. Then democracy collapses once the masses have learned they can vote themselves money from the public treasury. Great plan you have there.