Close to the Machine: Technophilia and Its Discontents: Amazon.co.uk: Ellen Ullman: Books

Synopsis

Ullman is a software engineer who runs a company out of her loft in San Francisco. She reveals the seduction of abstract information, algorithms, and networks, and the constant social and philosophical repercussions that keep her connected to the human race and material world. She finds cyberculture neither the death nor the salvation of civilizati

From the Publisher

THE CRITICS PRAISE CLOSE TO THE MACHINE!
NEWSWEEK, December 8, 1997:
Ellen Ullman, English major turned computer programmer, writes about her rather wacky life with humor and aplomb in this diaristic work, subtitled "Technophilia and Its Discontents." Ullman takes her liberal-arts sensibility and opens a fascinating window onto the culture of people obsessed with ActiveX controls, device drivers and Visual C++. By turns hilarious and sobering, this slim gem of a book chronicles the Silicon Valley way of life--contracts won and projects botched, start-ups that dissolve into thin air, partnerships formed and busted, even Ullman's bizarre romantic entanglement with a self-described anarchocapitalist. The book is chock-full of delicately profound insights into work, money, love, and the search for a life that matters.

THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW, November 30, 1997:
Part memoir, part techie mantra, part observation on the ever-changing world of computer programming, "Close to the Machine" is the nicely balanced story of a 46-year-old woman coming to terms with middle age in her personal life as well as in her chaotic profession as a software engineer. Ullman comes off as an interesting character, a connoisseur of both fine wine and complex scripting languages ... [An] admirable story of a strong woman standing up to, and facing down, "obsolescence" in two different, particularly unforgiving worlds--modern technology and modern society.

WIRED, December 1997:
. . . disjunctions are at play in Ullman's life and in the central intimacy of her identity as a coder: her closeness to the machine. We see the seduction at the heart of programming: embedded in the hijinks and hieroglyphics are the esoteric mysteries of the human mind.

THE VILLAGE VOICE, November 4, 1997:
For someone sitting so close to the machine, Ellen Ullman possesses a remarkably wide-angle perspective on the technology culture she inhabits.

LA WEEKLY, November 14, 1997:
At some point in Ullman's stories, it should start to dawn on a reader why software turns out the way it does: why "groupware" means never having to say good morning, and why systems geeks prefer email to telephones. Ullman writes of engineers who knew their jobs were ending but continued perfecting their programs anyway; of colleagues who don't speak for days, so thorough is their compulsion to work. It's from such imaginations that the fundamental principles of software are born. "Marketing people talk about it as if these things are built by human interface specialists with psychology degrees," Ullman says. "But what programmers really believe and do determines this technology to a much larger degree than the people who employ them would like to admit. On many levels, the world that programmers live in is being reproduced within the software."

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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful

Best book on "computer culture" I've read. 10 Dec 1998

By A Customer

Format:Paperback

I read this book a year ago when it first came out and loved it. I've re-read it just to enjoy Ellen Ullman's terrific writing. She is a GREAT writer.

Ellen Ullman uses her life in the fast lane to comment on parts of cyber-culture that we rarely talk about but ought to. It isn't political or technical. It's more social commentary.

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

The First Mandatory TechnoCulture Reading Ever 27 May 1998

My heart danced as I read this book. Although not jewish, bisexual, or female, and although not yet pushing forty myself, Ms. Ullman's work sang through the printed page: Yes! *This* is me! *This* is what I have never been able to convey to those in my life who are not technical people. Contrary to what seems to be the popular opinion, this book is not about sexuality, it is about the chasm between the social world and the abstract world of machine logic.

We, the programmers, cannot simultaneously interact according to the organic subtleties of human interaction and also according to the harsh clarity of the machine. In her sexuality and in her memories of her father, Ullman explores the moments of human contact.

If you are close to someone who programs computers, you should read Close to the Machine.

And that goes double, triple, if you are someone who programs computers.

By a geek for the geeks 7 Dec 1998

This is a beautiful book, written by someone who not only understands how to work computers, but understands how the computer is working on her -- the seduction of the machine, the impact it has on her life, and the compromises she has to make around her choices.

The basic problem is that this book is probably completely incomprehensible to anyone who doesn't see computers in the same way. Ullman's commentary is all about the same subject: not about computers, but about people, and the kinds of people who are attracted and subverted by technology. If you're not a geek, you'll probably be mystified. If you are, you'll be riveted.

This is probably the same reason why I fall asleep reading the New Yorker, only in reverse.