Book Report: The Dream Hotel
What’s going on, Internet? I just finished reading The Dream Hotel by Laila Lalami, and while I enjoyed the book, it also left me feeling extremely unsettled. There was nothing bad about the book — it was a fantastic story. One I smashed through in a couple of days. It unsettled me because of how close to our reality the world depicted in the book is.
The book explores themes of surveillance, privacy, and the state’s (or corporations’) power to use the data they’re happily collecting from us to enforce authoritarian rule, against our best interests. Think about it. How many technologies, policy decisions, or public attitudes are we away from this type of dystopia?
For those currently cruising through life with a “I have nothing to hide” attitude, this book serves as a wake-up call to what could (will?) happen in the next couple of years.
This book is a reminder that privacy isn’t about hiding something “bad.” No. It’s about having the freedom to be human without constant observation, without being pre-judged, recorded, or misrepresented. The ruling algorithm has no idea how to place context into our everyday interactions. It just knows how to act on data points.
While it’s only a fictional story, The Dream Hotel should be required reading for anyone who still thinks privacy is optional or that surveillance only matters if you’re guilty.
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