We're in the middle of reading Dave Eggers' novel, "The Circle," which is centered around an altruistic, insanely profitable Internet company that bears some suspicious resemblance to what we imagine Google is like in real life.

We're only about 120 pages in, but one of the early ideas focuses on tiny cameras that can be placed all around the world so that no deed, good or bad, ever goes unnoticed or unrecorded. Knowing Eggers' work, we have a pretty strong feeling things won't turn out to be all so keen with these devices or The Circle in general, but the idea did lead to this thought: we're not that far off from such a thing in reality, and at least in the case of some of sports' latest scandals, that's not a bad thing.

Without cameras, the Ray Rice incident becomes a he said, she said affair — no less horrific, but without the images seared into our brains, the visceral reaction would be muted. Based on the way Rice's wife continues to defend him, despite the fact that video seems to show he punched her and knocked her unconscious, we have to imagine this incident would have gone away far more quietly than it deserved to, and Rice would still be playing for the Ravens — which he does not deserve.

In the case of alleged racism with the Atlanta Hawks, an electronic paper trail and recording of a conference call are at the forefront of the evidence. A generation ago, maybe everything terrible that was said to have been uttered just drifts away into the wind or winds up in a garbage can.

Donald Sterling? An audio recording.

Much of this isn't earth-shattering technology to most of us, but it is technology that hasn't existed for the vast majority of human existence. The bottom line now is that throughout the world, up to and certainly including the sports world, there is a trail of evidence and it will only continue to mount.

That probably will not end up being a good thing in Eggers' "The Circle," as we can only imagine the unintended consequences of all of society's movements being recorded, but if it means powerful people in the sports world are being held accountable for what appear to be despicable actions, the more evidence the better.