Close to the Machine Technophilia and Its Discontents

"This book is a little masterpiece, an exquisitely melancholy cry from a body disappearing into the machine. It is a wrenching swan-song for human beings. I have never read anything like it because nothing like could have been written before." -Andrei Codrescu

Ellen Ullman is an American computer programmer and author. She has written novels as well as articles for various publications, including Harper's Magazine, Wired, The New York Times, and Salon. Her essays and novels analyze the human side of the world of computer programming. Ullman earned a bachelor’s degree  in English at Cornell University in the early 1970s. She then turned to business programming in the following years. She eventually began writing about her experiences as a programmer in 1995 when she wrote an essay titled "Out of Time: Reflections on the Programming Life." She lives in San Francisco.

 

"Astonishing…Impossible to put down."---San Francisco Chronicle

"Close to the Machine may be the best---it’s certainly the most human---book to have emerged thus far from the culture of Silicon Valley. Ullman is that rarity, a computer programmer with a poet’s feeling for language."---Laura Miller, Salon

"Part memoir, part techie mantra, part observation on the ever-changing world of computer science…[Ullman is] a strong woman standing up to, and facing down, ‘obsolescence’ in two different, particularly unforgiving worlds---modern technology and modern society."---The New York Times Book Review

"Fascinating…Chock-full of delicately profound insights into work, money, love, and the search for a life that matters."---Newsweek

"Ullman comes with her tech bona fides intact (she is, after all, a seasoned software engineer). But she also comes with novel material….We see the seduction at the heart of programming: embedded in the hijinks and hieroglyphics are the esoteric mysteries of the human mind."---Wired

"This book is a little masterpiece….I have never read anything like it."---Andrei Codrescu

"For someone sitting so close to the machine, Ellen Ullman possesses a remarkably wide-angle perspective on the technology culture she inhabits."---The Village Voice