6 ways that ‘Big Brother’ technology in ‘The Circle’ is already happening – USA TODAY

USA TODAY premieres the new trailer for The Circle, starring Emma Watson and Tom Hanks and based on Dave Eggers best-selling novel.

Emma Watson plays Mae, a young employee who gets way more than she bargained for (and way behind on her technology) at The Circle.(Photo: Frank Masi, STX Entertainment)

It isn't easy to make a movie about technology taking over/ruining the world particularly because it takes at least two years to get a movie from script to screen, allowingSilicon Valley time to create the very thing that futuristic films are trying to warn us about.

Suchis thefate that befalls The Circle, a new drama (in theaters Friday)based on Dave Eggers' 2013 novel. The movie starsTom Hanks as Eamon Bailey, aSteve Jobs-esque tech CEO, and Emma Watson as Mae, a freshman employee at The Circle who gets in over her head. Only problem is,the scariest parts of The Circle are already happening. Lets explore.

Tom Hanks stars as CEO of The Circle (which bears a familiar logo seen on his coffee cup and the wall behind him).(Photo: Frank Masi, STX Entertainment)

For starters, the company logo

The logo for The Circle, an Apple/Google/Facebook hybrid company, is a circle with a line sliced out of it. Funny, thats almost exactly the shape Uber replaced its old logo with early last year, just flipped 180degrees.

Futuristic points: 0 (scale of 1 to 5)

Behold, the year-old new Uber logo.(Photo: Lionel Bonaventure, AFP/Getty Images)

High-tech medical bracelets

Mae and her family sign up for the company medical plan, which is super-advanced and helps with her father's multiple sclerosis. But The Circle slaps a metal bracelet on her wrist, which tracks her intravenous system, her heart rateand her overall health. Sounds a lot like, um, an Apple Watch. Or health insurance-sponsored Fitbits, now a common perk at companies that offer incentives toward weekly step counts (tracking employee movement through programs like Walkadoo). But we'll allowa few points for advancement, as our smartwatches have yet tocure us.

Futuristic points: 3

Check out the medical device in 'The Circle.' Will our Apple Watches look like this in the future?(Photo: Frank Masi, STX Entertainment)

'Optional' socialization

Employees at The Circle are coerced into socializing their entire day:what theyre interested in, how theyre feeling, what their plans are. The dark side, of course, is that none of that information actually belongs to them anymore. This debate is already raging, not just forthe millions glued to Facebook, Snapchat and Instagram, but also for those who are simply scrolling through Amazon Prime on their computers.Thanks to Donald Trump's recent rollback ofInternet privacy rules passed last year by the Federal Communications Commission, it's now legal for Internet providers to sell customers'information including their search histories. Welcome to the future.

Futuristic points: 0

One account for everything

In The Circle, Eamon artfully debuts TruYou, a service that ties together all of your bank and credit card accounts into one, with a single password. Remember that time you paid for groceries with Apple Pay? Were getting pretty darn close.

Futuristic points: 1, for imagining a world in which we all don't juggle 10 passwords

Tom Hanks debuts live video broadcast from tiny unwired cameras. Imagine that.(Photo: STX Entertainment)

Livecasting your every move

After fully drinking the company Kool-Aid, Mae decides to clipa camera to her shirt andlive broadcasther entire life, morning to night. Which you can now do on Facebook Live and Instagram Live, for better or worse.

Futuristic points: 0

At least the little cameras are cute.(Photo: Frank Masi)

Eyes that watch us around the world

A cool feature introduced by Eamon is a marble-sizecamera that devotees can stickanywhere, turning the world into one giant livecast. Were not entirely at the stalker-level cameras imagined by The Circle yet, but between satellite images, omnipresent security cameras and easily hacked cameras in our computers, cellphones and tablets, were near it.

Futuristic points: 2

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6 ways that 'Big Brother' technology in 'The Circle' is already happening - USA TODAY