The Circle
A "what if" study of a fully connected world.
The central premise of 2017's "The Circle" is that the world has been fully connected through a network of always on, always watching, tiny, cheap, inocuous cameras.
It is technically sci-fi, though all the elements I observed are more than reasonable. More a matter of minitiuarization and falling hardware prices than actual technological breakthroughs.
The Good
I am very forgiving of things that cause me to change my perception, or open me to a new way of thinking. Did this movie have flaws? Absolutely. I'll get to those later. Let's talk about what it did well.
Use of a character as a proxy for popular culture
Emma Watson went through the stages of acceptance of an omnipotent society in an extremely collapsed timeline. What she did in a matter of months most people in developed nations are still aclimatizing to.
At one point Tom Hanks turns to her and gets her to "admit" that having experiences that you do not share with others is a form of theft. A form of emotional hording. At this moment in history, such an idea seems ludicrous. Almost perverse. Only celebrities and politicians have no right to privacy? Right?
I don't know.
I am not sure people 15 years from now will agree. How would someone from 15 years ago feel about selfie sticks? Snapchats of your dinner? Tweeting by politicians. Sexting. Facebook friends. Online Dating. Etc. Probably seems pretty ludicrous. Inhuman. Disconnected. Shallow. And yet, here we are.
Accounting the cost and benefits of omnipotence
Yeah, a lot of great things could occur. From the trivial to the fundamental.
Immediate reactions as machines watching our feeds recognize violence, injury, and danger and automatically notify and dispatch emergency responders.
Automatically and constantly dealing with fundamental weaknesses in society. Making sure that people don't get too isolated; too lonely. That people who exhibit sighs of mental disorders are regularly visited by health care professionals. Checking in on everyone with the (literal) persistence of a machine.
Violent crime does not make sense. Only physical crime that would still exist would be crimes of passion. Crimes that law enforcement was incapable of negating due to being sudden and unexpected. Although tragic, when a violent crime occurs, it would almost always be evident what occured and who was responsible.
Ask yourself? How much would you be willing to give up for such a world?
Open Goverment
Movie makes a big deal about having a open (probably puppet) politician.
Prisons
Here is one that I fully agree with. Prisons should be places that have cameras literally everywhere. In a high risk environment like a prison, I would happily trade my privacy for the knowledge that I am not going to be raped or assaulted.
Police Officers
This is already occuring. I forsee that in the next decade, the cost of insuring a police officer who refuses to wear (and use) a full body camera will be so high that departments will require police officers to have them running at all times.
Politicians
Heh, I don't know. It would be interesting. Could most of the goverment be entirely opened? Would we allow "black boxes" like the CIA, FBI, NSA, etc? Would it turn out that backroom negotiations by our nations actually do benefit citizens more than they hurt? Would it cut corruption? Hard to say.
The Bad
- What was John Boyega constantly looking at on his phone?
- Why did John Boyega show her the basement? What was the significance of mentioning the water at the end of the tunnel?
- What the hell was John Boyega's problem? Why did he seem to have all this power to do all these things, and he literally just stood around the entire movie doing... what? Waiting for Emma Watson to make a decision about the future of our "omnipotent" distopia/utopia? It made little sense.
- Software engineers tend to be pretty opinionated. There would be a lot of dissent about some of the things that "Circle" was doing. It was a little unrealistic how "united" (cult like) the "Circle" corporate family was.
- Ellar Coltrane was a rather odd inclusion. From the scene where he comes to the Circle campus to complain about being a "deer killer" onward, it just didn't fit.
- The Ellar Coltrane rising action and denouement was pretty lame.
- Emma Watson's transformation from being a skeptic of the omnipotence to a supporter did not really feel earned. Might have played a little more to why she is putting away her previous skepticism and what particular benefits she thinks a fully connected society will bring.
- Honestly, too many ideas, not enough time to give each of them their own merrit. This is a difficult and multifaceted question with most of its sharp corners filled down.
Conclusion (spoil the last scene in the movie here)
Yes, it has some serious flaws. But it gives you things to think about, and it honestly resolved the ending in a rather novel way. Rather than fighting the system, Emma Watson instead fully opens and embraces it. Basically making the case that if such a system exist, it needs to be placed under open rather closed controlers.
If you are going to have a system that is going to audit the world, then you must audit everyone in control of that system.
