Ex Machina Analysis

The future is frightening according to the book The Circle, by Dave Eggers, and the movie Ex Machina, directed by Alex Garland. The Circle is about a woman, Mae Holland, who starts working The Circle. The Circle is a powerful tech company that creates an all-in-one password solution and transforms the Internet by pushing users to embrace their real names online. Mae quickly rises her way to the top by going transparent and having an inexpensive, high-quality camera around her neck that streams HD video to the Internet. The Circle offers a new age of honesty and crime-free living — all for the low, low-cost of personal privacy. The book is a satirical piece, but outlines serious problems we face today. The film Ex Machina, meanwhile, is a sci-fi
In the book, everyone working at The Circle sturdily believes that “All that happens must be known” (68). Eamon Bailey is a public face of the Circle, and he firmly believes that all people should have access to all information. While giving a presentation on SeeChange cameras, Bailey discusses how his mother declined to installing SeeChange cameras in her house, however, he installs them anyway while she is napping (Eggers 68). Bailey says that he installed these cameras to check on her and make sure she is “safe.” Nonetheless, he is still invading her privacy, because she declined to the installment of the cameras. SeeChange cameras see everything and track people who don’t want to be watched or noticed. They’re straight out invading people’s privacy. In Ex Machina, this theme is shown in a scene with Nathan and Caleb. Nathan spills how he figured out getting an AI to read and duplicate facial expressions. He says that every cell phone has a microphone, camera, and a means to transmit data, so he turned on every accessible microphone and camera on the planet and redirected the data through BluBook. He hacked the world of cell phones with the manufacturers knowing he was doing it, but they couldn’t accuse him without admitting they were doing it themselves. Just like the cell phone companies, he recorded the data of every accessible person on the planet, and completely violated
In Ex Machina, Nathan has created a small world on his estate and has built a smothering laboratory underground. It is hard to see what is real or not when you don’t have a connection to the outside world. Caleb becomes a part of the Nathan’s world, and becomes a bit delusional. In a disturbing scene in the film, he starts pulling the skin on his stomach and under his eyes to see if he has any robotic parts in him. He opens his mouth and stretches it almost pulling out his teeth to see if he is a machine. Finally, he gets out a blade and cuts his arm to see if real blood comes out. Forced to be in this disturbing house/laboratory, he forgets what is real and gets lost in Nathan’s crazy little world. In the book, this theme is shown when Mae is driving home after visiting her parents. She is thinking about how on campus there is “no need to explain herself, or the future of the world, to the Circlers, who implicitly understood her and the planet and the way it had to be and soon would be” (373). She found it difficult to be around people who weren’t working at The Circle, and generally found it hard to be off-campus. She thought the world was filthy and wanted to just be in the technological bubble that was The Circle. She didn’t want to think about the outside world and it’s “assaulting smells, and there were machines that didn’t work, and floors and seats that had not