The Circle by Dave Eggers

I would characterize this as the 21st century version of  George Orwell's classic '1984'--Eggers was clever enough not to literally date his book, and while the company/community that he creates called 'The Circle' bears a remarkable resemblance to Google, he is careful to point out that it is in the post-Google era.  The thing that is annoying about the book for the more technologically saavy is that Eggers is naive about what is currently possible and being done, but if you can follow it as a work of fiction in an undetermined time in the future (maybe the not too distant future), it is a cautionary tale rather than a book to be criticized for it's lack of up to date information.  It is particularly timely in the light of the level of scrutiny that the NSA is devoting to each and every one of our data.

Mae is hired by her college friend to work at The Circle.  While she is on her initial HR tour of the company, they quietly take her phone and laptop out of her hands and upload all the data into the very public Cloud, and all that she does going forward becomes information available to everyone.  The very perceptive piece of all of this is that we are drawn to vicarious living, whether we are nerds (the category that most of The Circle employees reside in) or socially popular.  Mae is encouraged to spend all of her life, both professional and personal, within the company, and that she share all of her experiences broadly and publically.  I think the scene that sums up the situation best is when Mae is revealed to be the object of a fellow employees passion, and they do an expose on her based solely on the information about her available on social media.  Just thinking about that, which is possible today, gives a sense of the profound lack of personal privacy we have and where that could lead.