The Film "The Circle" (2017), or a World Without Privacy

The film was released this spring, has received quite a lot of negative reviews, has already earned at least 30 million US dollars and is rated average on IMDb with 5.3 points. Despite all of this, one cannot deny that it addresses something as relevant today as the disappearance of privacy and the desire of large corporations to control the world.

A young woman - let us call her Mae - thanks to her best friend, lands a coveted and well-paid job at a large technology company called The Circle. Her task is to analyse customer experience and obtain the best possible feedback from them. Mae's work is also carefully observed and evaluated with virtual bonus points. She does quite well, but the company finds this insufficient.

All Circle employees must be a unified whole - actively participating in corporate events, sharing personal information about family, hobbies and friends on their social media profiles, monitoring their health status, expressing ratings and opinions. It is an almost closed community where everything is plentiful and more than enough, yet there is video surveillance everywhere and constant logging of employees' communications and activities. Everyone is positive, communicative and proactive. But the company's ambitions are even broader - such a controlled order across the entire world.

Mae successfully absorbs the trend created by the company's founder and becomes a mouthpiece for his ideas, the first person to attach a camera to herself and live 24/7 online. The whole world can observe her every step, hear her every word. She is popular and proud of what she does. Her parents, best friend and boyfriend - a pronounced loner who is opposed to globalisation and internetisation - are gradually drawn into this online life. Privacy disappears, and so does any moral or ethical norm that allows for a different lifestyle or viewpoint from that accepted by the majority.

It all ends rather sadly when Mae's friend is killed in a car accident while being tracked by drones and internet users with iPhones. Her parents are understanding and prepared to tolerate a great deal for their daughter's wellbeing, but even their patience has its limits and the surveillance cameras are removed from the home. Her best friend quits the company and flees to the green, still-untouched British countryside where webcams have yet to be installed.

The film's resolution is interesting and makes one think (with certain concerns about the future). Such plots inevitably involve rebellion against the company's leadership and the public disclosure of their private and business information, which completely ruins their lives and their control of The Circle. The new generation's revolt against the old - millennials against Generation X, Gen Z against millennials, and so on. All of this is natural. But one thing remains unchanged: global surveillance does not disappear; Mae announces even more insistently that going forward there will be 100% transparency for absolutely everyone, and no one - managers, politicians, scientists, kitchen workers - will be able to remain in the shadows.

Openness and transparency are good - don't be afraid of them. Give up your unnecessary privacy. Technology will protect you if you don't protect or care for yourself. It will prevent you from dying in accidents, it will monitor your heart rate, treat diseases and balance your diet and physical activity, protect you from evil and differently-thinking people. You will live in a circle and be part of it.

Interestingly, the film's screenwriters play with the word "circle" and the campus-type corporate residential community, which involuntarily echoes Apple's new headquarters, constructed in a ring shape and designed as a communal living and working environment.

The harshest realisation is that this is not a science fiction film or a technology thriller, whatever it may be called. It is a reality that we are increasingly immersed in. We spend our days on social networks, mark our locations (check in), hundreds of webcams observe us in our cities, our smart devices hold everything about our physical activity and sleep patterns - not to mention the documents, emails, photographs and videos stored in cloud solutions (practically indelible). Eavesdropping on or observing someone is no longer any problem at all - it only requires the skills to use the relevant technologies and, for now, internal ethical and moral norms, which may or may not have been instilled.

Exactly - instilled, because a person is not born with morality and ethics; these are a decision of society. And what if the new society has different decisions? How strong is the individual's mind for a critical view of such decisions? Let us remember that instincts remain. They are indeed innate to each person (at least for as long as the concept of the human is what we understand it to be now - the unenhanced, non-robotised human being). And to survive in such a society, adaptation will be necessary.