For your first journal entry, presuming you’ve read through Book 2, Part 2 (pages will vary depending your edition of the book – it might be p. 466) ponder all of the following:

1. At the Concept Kingdom meeting, where they are discussing how to improve voter participation to 100%, Mae puts forth, “So why not require every voting-age citizen to have a Circle account?” And then follows it up with “So why can’t we require them to vote?….you register them automatically and then when election day comes around you make sure they vote.” (This idea is eventually released as Demoxie.) How would you feel if voting authentication were done and mandated through an Internet service like Facebook or Google or Twitter – and you prevented from using any parts of those systems until you had voted? Do you think it would cause elections (don’t just think presidential – consider all the down-ballot elections, including weed board and dog catcher) to happen differently? In theory The Circle’s TruYou system would prevent illegal voting, but do consider breaches in your response, because there is a way around everything.
2. At the same meeting Stenton discusses how the concept of Demoxie could put government out of business by going directly to the people – “perfect democracy” is a term used. Later on, Mae ponders how much money could be saved if there were no campaigns of middlepeople (i.e. Congress) and how that money could be used for health care or education. Although the question was a test run for Demoxie, and only for Circlers, the collective voted for a drone strike on a terrorist mastermind. What are your thoughts on that? Do you feel that current politicians might be using social media to reach out more directly to their constituents?
3. What are your thoughts on the Aspirant program’s innovations SeeYou and NeighborWatch?
4. Mae uses the SoulSearch program to locate Mercer. How do you feel about what happens?

This journal is private and only viewable by you and the professor.

Feel free to have a little fun with your journal.  It’s okay to be creative, experiment, and try new things here with your writing style and content. You can try freestyle writing if you like, where you let your thoughts run without worrying about style, grammar and spelling.

Please do write in this regularly – we want you to reflect as the class is going on, not wait until the end.

The entire journal counts for 10% of your overall grade (100 points total, 20 points for each entry). You are evaluated on quality and quantity of journal entries. Graded as Complete/Incomplete, where a B or higher is Complete.

Note: The Circle is 500 pages. There are at most 2 pages of content that contain adult situations (expressed in PG-13 terms) that are relevant to the plot. If these small segments are a problem for you, please contact your professor to discuss alternate options.

Submission Requirements:

• Format: Microsoft Word APA STYLE
• Font: Times New Roman, 12-point, Double-spaced
• Citation Style: APA
• Length: 1 page (275 words)