Posted on 08/09/2017 3:29:26 AM PDT by EliRoom8
Has Dave Eggers written a parable of our time, an eviscerating takedown of Silicon Valley and its privacy-invading technology companies?
Or has he missed his target, producing a sanctimonious screed that fails to humanize its characters and understand its subject?
Book critics are divided over the quality of Mr. Eggerss highly anticipated novel The Circle, which went on sale Tuesday. But in Silicon Valley and beyond, the books theme promises to spark an even bigger debate over the 21st-century hyperconnected world that Mr. Eggers describes.
Set in an undefined future time, Mr. Eggerss novel tells the story of Mae Holland, a young idealist who comes to work at the Circle, an immensely powerful technology company that has conquered all its competitors by creating a single log-in for people to search, shop and socialize online.
The loss of privacy is assumed to be inevitable by tech leaders of all sorts, so they figure you might as well embrace and hasten it. Well to hell with that. Friggin libtards.
That simile came to this mind as well. Very much like FP, Mr. K. Not knowing this plot, it also seems to have a flavor of Logan’s Run. Hanks is not a flavor enjoyed nor consumed. May be a good movie despite all that. Will await further reviews.
A positive? Depends on what is being gripped and how hard it’s squeezed.
That is certainly a different way to rationalize it. I’ll read the book.
I enjoyed what Hanks did with Saving Private Ryan and Band of Brothers, but after he began his vocal advocacy of liberal themes.
They must be doing a good job of suppressing it. I just asked my 31yo son if he’d heard of it and for the first time EVER, he got scooped by mom. I was able to forward him this article just as he was boarding his flight and he was happy to have the reading material. I always tease him about his high tech gadgets spying on him. I wonder if he’ll be as enamored of his Nest and Echo and even his Fitbit once he sees the movie. He watched the trailer and said it looked creepy, like 1984.
I scanned the one star reviews on Amazon and Imdb and I couldn’t tell whether they were orchestrated or not. I have done a more systematic job on books in the climate area and the orchestration is clear, e.g., Michael Mann’s The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars.
Are there any tools out there that allow you to determine whether reviews are essentially faked?
I don’t pay attention to movies -at all. Has this one been in the theatres already?
I did a quick search on google with these search terms
tool to check whether reviews are fake?
Here’s some results. There are more.
http://fakespot.com/
https://reviewmeta.com/
http://www.techtimes.com/articles/127986/20160126/web-tool-helps-identify-fake-amazon-reviews.htm
Thanks, I never knew about this site. The captions are excellent.
I could believe that the film is poorly executed—but has any rotten tomatoes score ever legitimately registered that low before? That looks indeed like a defensively-stuffed ballot box. Though again, that doesn’t mean the film is well done.
I always look at the second number on the reviews because that’s the audience reaction number. I find audience reviews to be more reliable than professional reviews because the professional reviewers tend to review things according to PC codes whereas the audience reviews are rating whether the movie is enjoyable to watch. ie did you feel like you got your money’s worth. The professionals pay nothing,
It is on Amazon Video, too.
Removal of religion from the public square does not remove the impulse.
Hence the religious devotion now poured into liberal political ideology (social justice). Environmentalism was called out as a religion of Earth Worship by Micheal Crighton a decade ago, of which global warming/climate change is but one example.
Or shifting it into science to become science fiction, like the Singularity. That there is no god but we’ll invent an all knowing, ought to be all seeing artificial intelligence that will not only be benevolent but let us upload our minds to digital heaven and live forever.
Already been done. It was called "The Net," with the girl from "The Bus."
Saw it online, the movie ended up a lot darker than I mistook it for. I felt it did a great job of exposing where technology could be headed, and the interconnected stress that would cause.
Was expecting it to be a “C”, but gave it an “A”.
Ah, jeez—I just did the quick scan. Thanks for the reminder/footnote.
No different that the story of Billy Mumphrey, a simple country boy. You might say a cockeyed optimist...
True.
OTOH, I have found that watching a movie first, then reading the book makes me enjoy the book better, because I am visualizing characters and events in my mind as I read, and events from the movie that might differ from the book are less intrusive (to me)
But when I read a book then watch the movie, I am often disappointed, because the detail of the book (and even the entire plot) may be quite different than what is in the movie, and it seems very intrusive to me.
Sigh. I wish I were more ignorant of a lot of things, but I find it impossible to segregate them in my mind.
I used to enjoy Pink Floyd music many years ago, and I went to a Roger Waters concert in 2004, and it was hours of left wing political indoctrination and lecturing, complete with slideshows of political statements (Palestinian cause, American warmongering, etc.) going on behind the performer which he took time between songs (and sometimes even stopping the song in midstream to make some liberal political statement) It was appalling. I would have left, but I was there with a large group of people and I didn’t want to ruin their evening. But I can’t listen to Pink Floyd anymore.
I used to be an inveterate Coca Cola drinker, drinking six or seven of those a day...for decades. I saw a Coke commercial recently that had a teenage girl and her homosexual teenage brother vying for the attention of a muscular pool boy, and their mother beat both of them to him. I was disgusted and appalled, and haven’t had one since. I know, it is probably good for me not to drink those, but...that is how it goes.
Likewise with Hanks and Spielberg. I used to love their stuff. Now, it is all tainted to a degree for me. Same with Emma Watson.
Sometimes I do wish I could just un-see some things. Live would be easier.
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