Silicon Scary

    It has been a number of months, but at some point before this quarter was underway, I recall reading an excerpt of Dave Eggers's newest novel The Circle.  The story revolves around Mae Holland, a new hire at an enormous, monolithic social networking company that shares its namesake with the novel.  She is excited and somewhat intimidated at first, but the balance quickly shifts towards the latter when Mae starts drowning within the all-encompassing nature of her work.  At The Circle, everyone alive is ranked on a kind of social scoring database based on their social networking activity.  As an employee, Mae is subjected to constant examinations and employee check-ins to push her to stay constantly and totally socially active.  Parties become work and work is treated like some creepy kind of party.  There are strong allusions to 1984 - "Secrets are lies. Sharing is Caring. Privacy is theft."

    "The Circle" seems pretty clearly to be the dystopian version of the modern day tech corporation mega-campus a la the Googleplex.  This is a rich topic, in part because not many of us outsiders have ever had a real good look inside this hermetically sealed bubble world.  I would say that the idea of work blending with life is reasonably frightening.  Corporations like Google have a stake in their workers staying at work - it helps the bottom line.  But what is the result when we blend our social identities with our work personas so intricately?  What is the future of individuality and personal freedom in a society so constantly entwined with their technology?

    I clearly don't have these answers, and I can't say if Eggers does either, but this is a topic worth discussing.  I know many people personally, both in and out of the liberal arts, who have already dedicated themselves to careers in tech and social media, at least for now.  It seems to be increasingly the case that to live in the Bay Area requires some kind of daily interface, if not downright immersion, in the world of tech.  And this world is expanding quickly.  I don't mean to fear monger, because I probably love my technology as much or more than the next person, but being so near the heart of things, we owe it to ourselves to play an active role in deciding how to move forward.

    I am really interested - is anyone thinking about going into the tech industry?  If so, let us know what you plan to (or would like to) do in that field.