The Dream Hotel

Social media is a motif exploring The Ethics of Surveillance and the Importance of Personal Privacy, since how people use their social media has much to do with their risk score within the novel. Social media as a motif helps develop the tension between needing human connection and needing privacy from the prying eye of the state; characters desperate for human connection, like Julie, rely extensively on social media and gossip articles to sustain themselves, while characters with stable social lives, like Sara, rarely use social media yet have anxiety around how they might be perceived on it. Social media also serves the role of a general informant for both sides; Sara uses social media to find out Julie’s real identity without much trouble, proving that social media can reveal secrets without intending to. At the same time, she is unable to find more information on her roommate’s former girlfriend, who practices rigorous internet safety to avoid being identified. Social media also proves that privacy is a lie in a surveillance state—Sara’s lack of interest in it does not help her avoid retention or blame. She recounts a story where a troll reported her account for nudity despite it only containing historical pictures, which proves that even things with positive or neutral intentions can be poorly received without context. Social media is one piece of a complex algorithm bent on blaming her, and nothing she does on social media can be truly innocent as a result.

AI is a symbol of bias and insufficiency, exploring the theme Human Relationships as Resistance to Authoritarianism. There are multiple types of AI throughout the novel, from Scout to Nimble to the unnamed risk algorithm, all of which the characters interact with in a variety of ways. Some characters, like Sara at first or Julie, treat the AI as members of the family or even real people; others, like dissidents or Sara by the end of the book, recognize it as an unfeeling machine subject to the same biases as people. AI’s placement within the book as a replacement for human thought and relationships helps develop the contradicting point that human relationships are needed for true resistance to profiling or authoritarian regimes. When characters rely on or believe in AI too much, they lose sight of the people in front of them; the authorities believe they are above bias, and the enforcers at Madison forget to treat the retainees like people with independent thoughts and feelings. The different artificial intelligences within the book all prove that, in a society governed by robots, robotic behavior is the only behavior deemed “acceptable,” since AI cannot understand anything else and will subsequently deem it a risk. Thus, the most radical act a human being can do is to welcome other humans into their lives as messy, unpredictable individuals with inherent value, since no algorithm will ever be able to do the same.