Digital Individual Freedoms in Danger in Eggers’s Dystopias: Surveillance, Shame, Power, and Human Perfection

Dystopia, as both a political concept and literary genre, is currently undergoing a profound transformation, often called the digital turn. This article focuses on Dave Eggers’s dystopias The Circle and The Every and analyzes the characteristics of digital dystopias. These typical elements include the pervasive digital surveillance conducted by corporations along with lateral or participatory surveillance carried out by individuals and self-surveillance practices. Additionally, the narratives explore other themes, such as social conformity enforced through public shaming, the emergence of nonstate digital or cyber-totalitarianism, and the dehumanizing implications of transhumanist ambitions. Through the examination of Eggers’s novels as dystopias, this research draws comparisons with classical dystopian literature. Notably, Dave Eggers shows how the evolution of social media and apps could erode individual freedoms and privacy rights. While techno-utopianism and techno-dystopianism typically hinge on optimistic versus pessimistic perspectives of technological advancement, this study seeks to demonstrate that technology is neutral; however, it always contains a potential political value in the minds of those using it.