Timekeeper

 Time seems to  be  accelerating and I simply  cannot have enough time for reading fictions. I wish more people would care to read fictions, it is not just for pleasure, it gives us insights about humanity and living so we gain a better understanding about  how we are connected and if you think about it we are not that different from each other. Reading fictions help to evoke empathy in us whether it is historical, literary, contemporary or science fictions. I am a compulsive reader thus I treasure my lone time so I can read and process what I am reading.

Yuval Noah Harari wrote in Chapter 18 of  his third book, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century this:

‘Humans control the world because they can cooperate better with any other animal, and they can cooperate so well because they believe in fictions.  Poets, painters and playwrights are therefore at least as important as soldiers and engineers. People go to war and build cathedrals because they believe in God, and they believe in God because they have read poems about God, because they have seen pictures of God, and because they have been mesmerised by theatrical plays about God. Similarly, our belief in the modern mythology of capitalism is underpinned by the artistic creations of Hollywood and the pop industry. We believe that buying more stuff will make us happy, because we saw the capitalist paradise with our own eyes on television. ‘

The author of Sapiens  is of the view that science fiction is the most important artistic genre in the early twenty-first century.  I think I agree with that. The Circle, a dystopian novel written by Dave Eggers  and  creators of Black Mirror  television series try to forewarn us about the dark side of technology if we are not careful.  The Stepford Wives was published in 1972. It tells the cautionary tale of how the men in the idyllic town of Stepford have wives who are immaculately beautiful, keep their homes in perfect order and generate home baked food for the family.  Harari writes that movies like Ex Machina is not about the human fear of intelligent robots , it is more about the male fear of intelligent women, otherwise why on earth would an AI have a gender identity? 

Amongst my many reads , I am presently reading Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut, I find that the narratives  describing us humans are hilarious and quite spot on. It is a reminder that humans tend to defy the laws of nature. That is probably why we are where we are today.

Written in 1973, set in the fictional town of Midland City in Ohio. There are two main characters, Dwayne Hoover is a Pontiac car dealer and he is wealthy resident in the city. Kilgore Trout is a widely published but unknown science fiction writer.

In the story, Dwayne Hoover is going insane and his ‘incipient insanity was mainly a matter of chemicals, of course. Dwayne Hoover’s body was manufacturing certain chemicals which unbalanced his mind. But Dwayne, like all novice lunatics, needed some bad ideas, too, so that his craziness could have shape and direction.’  He meets Trout who gives him the bad idea.

‘ Trout considered himself not only harmless but invisible. The world had paid so little attention to him that he supposed he was dead. But he learned from his encounter with Dwayne that he was alive enough to give a fellow human being ideas which would turn him into a monster.’

So it is apparent that Trout can bring evil into the world. Things that Trout says innocently or  comments turns out to be the first germ in an epidemic of mind-poisoning. He therefore is  inadvertently poisoning the collective mind of New York city.

The author writes  this and it resonates with me :

‘ People took such awful chances with chemicals and their bodies because they wanted the quality of their lives to improve.’

 Kurt Vonnegut studied biochemistry at Cornell University. During the second world war, he had served in Europe and  his classic novel Slaughterhouse- Five was inspired by his experience witnessing the destruction of Dresden by Allied bombers, as  a prisoner of war  in Germany. Breakfast of Champions  is not an easy read as the author weaves science fiction , memoir , parable, fairy tale and farce. There are also illustrations by drawings. The story is about media, free will, suicide and race issues. The book  is a commendable  read.

A few weeks ago I read another contemporary novel  that has been written in unorthodox style.  When You Read This , the debut novel by Mary Adkins  is told through its characters via their emails, blog posts ( some with illustrated diagrams), text messages, and online therapy posts. When Iris Massey finds out that she has six months to live, she starts a blog and takes to writing and drawing to process it.  She has unrealized dreams of opening a bakery. Her sister, Jade finds it hard to accept that her younger sister is gone at age thirty-three and she questions the doctor who treated Iris with a view to find fault with him.  She wants to know why Iris did not go with the better chemo. She is a successful chef and she had always thought they had more time, for everything. After Iris dies, Smith, her boss from Simonyl Brand Management still continues to write to her. He cannot stop emailing Iris just like he can’t stop gambling.  After Iris passed on, Smith could not  find himself  getting a replacement for Iris’s role as his assistant. Four months on, his good friend, Richie  convinces him to take on Carl, aged 21 years, to be his intern.  Carl  Van Snyder can’t shut up and has a tendency  to overstep his role. Carl is hilarious. While cleaning out Iris’s drawer, he stumbles on what appears to be a print-out of Iris’s blog, He tells Simon about it via email and then he inadvertently takes the print-out  to lunch and then knocks over his  Arnold Palmer spilling it over the post-it note that is kind of still  legible. It reads:

‘ Smith ,

If you think this is any good, feel free to publish it. No pressure just because I’m dead.

Iris‘

The epistolary style draws you into the respective minds of the characters. It is a touching bittersweet  story in a contemporary setting. Thought provoking and funny at the same time. Happy to have read it. 

A Perfect Sunday

If you ask me what  my perfect Sunday is, it would be a day I can binge read whatever fictions that I want to read. But for the past few Sundays I had not been able to read leisurely without feeling guilty due to my work. Amidst some urgent work that had to be attended to, I read The Circle by Dave Eggers and Ghosts by Dolly Alderton.

The Circle is a dystopian novel written by Dave Eggers.

Mae Holland is a young graduate and with the help of her good friend, Annie Allerton,  she lands herself a job at the Circle, the world’s most powerful internet company. Annie, her good friend from college is the senior executive at the Circle. The Circle, run out of a sprawling California campus, designed with  open-plan office spaces, the towering glass dining facilities, cozy dorms for employees and a model  image of modernity and technology. The Circle links users’ personal emails, social media profiles,  preferences, their payment systems, banking and purchasing with their universal operating system, resulting in one online identity known as TruYou — one account, one identity, one password, one payment system, per person for the rest of your life online. Ty, born Tyler Alexander Gospodinov was the first founder who had first invented the system. ‘Ty realized he was, at best, socially awkward, and at worst an utter interpersonal disaster.’ So just before the company’s IPO, he hired Eamon Bailey and Tom Stenton,  with them on board, the IPO raised $3 billion. Ty is then free to float, to hide and to disappear.  TruYou is Ty’s innovations but Eamon and Tom who have the business acumen  monetize the innovations. The Circle has changed the internet, in toto. It is about  a new age of civility and transparency where the general public willingly and enthusiastically surrenders the right to privacy. Exchanges are based on social media smiles and frowns (likes and dislikes). With their innovations of SeeChange, lollipop-sized, wireless, real-time video cameras that can be placed anywhere around the globe, ChildTrack microchips that can be embedded in the bones of children, the Circle reigns over data tracking in the name of transparency and eliminating crimes. “ All that happens must be known”, “sharing is caring”, “privacy is theft” and “ secrets are lies” are the  mottos  of the company. In order to get votes, the Circle becomes popular with politicians and in reality , the company’s true intentions is to complete the Circle by making membership and subscription to the Circle mandatory so you can track people from cradle to grave and their lineage.

At the Circle, all employees are expected to be social and they are being profiled according to their personal interests and  preferences which are openly shared between colleagues. Life at the Campus is not only about work, there are  always parties that last through the night, famous musicians playing one the lawn, sporting activities, clubs, brunches for employees to participate for free. Mae finds that not only she gets full medical benefits like everyone else, even her parents’ health insurances are taken care of. As the story progresses,  she is really sold all those concepts that are being developed by the founders and the team. Mae adapts quickly to the fast-paced work culture and environment filled with constant barrage of screens that demand her full attention, she becomes the voice and public face of the Circle who films and record every aspect of her day.

When it becomes apparent that The Circle has become  uncontrollable, Mae, will perhaps, learn too late that the Circle cannot be stopped. She is confronted with a choice to make known the Circle’s true intentions and her power to support or undermine its vision.

Due to her willingness to participate in all the ever-expanding programmes for openness with SeeChange cameras around her parents’ home against her parents’ will, they decide to move away and Mae becomes estranged from her own parents to whom she used to be close. She also angers her ex-boyfriend, Mercer who does not need unsolicited help from Mae who is eager to show him how he can expand his business through the Circle. He tries in every way to flee from all the surveillances but Mae’s competitiveness  will not stop her from trying to convince him to surrender to the tools.

The fiction was published in 2013 and  it  is about the near future. Its theme is akin to what is depicted in Nineteen Eighty-Four written by George Orwell. Looking at how technology advances, the story in The Circle is not  far removed from what is happening today. We need to think about  the ramifications of the development of such  tools and what these tools might implicate on democracy, privacy and free will. Is it necessary to overshare information when not everyone is equipped with the resources and the ability to analyse let alone verify these information?

Identity is as much fluid as it is  personal. I shudder to think about living in a world where you are constantly being watched and you are compelled  to be on your best behaviour or a behaviour that is regarded by the rest of the world  as normal behaviour. Who gets to be the judge? Can you relax when you walk around knowing that you are being watched through a hidden camera at every minute of the day? Tools and new technology are invented with the best of intentions but when ambition, vanity and monetary gains are in the mix, those with the means and power will make use of the tools and technology to further enrich themselves and become even more powerful and continue to reign and dominate while the rest of the world try to keep up with fast growing technology and our minds made up for us leaving us hardly any options but endeavour to navigate ourselves through ever changing digital landscape.