Close to the Machine

Technophilia and Its Discontents--A Memoir

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by Ellen Ullman

City Lights Books

Due/Published November 1997, 160 pages, paper

ISBN 0872863328

This is one of Margaret Morse's "Breakthrough Books" on the Internet and the Web. She is the author of  Virtualities: Television, Media Art, and Cyberspace

Comparing Ullman's book to Johnson's Interface Culture, Morse calls this "a more somber treatment of the messages latent in the interface medium." She goes on to say: "Lyrically written ancedotes about algoritmic lovemaking with a 'cyberpunk' and the agony of designing software resonate with the dark cultural implication of the virtual life. For Ullman, a software engineer, second-wave feminist, and old communist, the word 'revolution' rings hollow from inside the crumbling software that threatens to destroy the banking system."

Here's another take:

Maybe you've her on NPR, but Ellen Ullman has written the insider's look at the world of software engineering and programming, the life of Silicon Valley, the culture of the people who live "closer to the machine" than I would ever want to. She is funny, a bit eccentric, and clear-eyed when it comes to revealing the world she has been part of for the last 16 years. As an old timer in the business, she talks about all the attitude of all the young bucks still engaged with the excitement of the technology--and her own double edged dissatisfaction/attraction to the technical world. Try it. If you see yourself in the world she describes, read the book and then give it to someone who won't recognize themselves in that world. They'll get a great kick out of it, too.