Here is a candid account of the life of a software engineer who runs her own computer consulting business out of a live-work loft in San Francisco's Multimedia Gulch. Immersed in the abstract world of information, algorithms, and networks, she would like to give in to the seductions of the programmer's world, where "weird logic dreamers" like herself live "close to the machine." Still, she is keenly aware that body and soul are not mechanical: desire, love, and the need to communicate face to face don't easily fit into lines of codes or clicks in a Web browser. At every turn, she finds she cannot ignore the social and philosophical repercussions of her work. As Ullman sees it, the cool world of cyber culture is neither the death of civilization nor its salvation-it is the vulnerable creation of people who are not so sure of just where they're taking us all.
Ellen Ullman has worked as a software engineer and consultant since 1978. She is the author of The Bug and her writing has been published in Resisting the Virtual Life, Wired Woman, and in Harper's Magazine. She is a commentator on National Public Radio's "All Things Considered.""
If there is such a thing as a typical computer programmer, Ellen Ullman is not it. She's female, a former communist, bisexual, old enough to be a twentysomething's mom, and not a nerd. She runs her own computer-consulting business in San Francisco and in Close to the Machine explores a world in which "the real world and its uses no longer matter." This memoir examines the relationship between human and machine, between material and cyberworlds and reminds us that the body and soul exist before and after any machine. The wit Ullman brings to her National Public Radio commentaries shines through in the prose.
Customer Reviews:
Avg. Customer Rating: 3.5 / 5.0
Self-Congratulatory Vacuous Fizz (Review Written in 2001):
Although there are some passages of interest to a person that is interested in computers and consulting (such as myself), upon finishing this book one wonders what it's function is. One bad sign is that she seems to throw terms out not to be technically informative in any sense of the word, but more as if to prove her savvy. I began to wonder: is this a vanity book? Since it is the tale of an unrepentant yuppie feigning self-questioning, with token doubts about her life, caught up in a very shallow... more info
Tedious, boring and insulting.:
There is really nothing to this book. When I finally finished it I was like "That was it?" Aside from the lack of any kind of interesting or engaging plot I found the very stereotypical charicterizations of programmers to be insulting. I get the feeling that the author is one of those "non-geek" programmers who (incorrectly) thinks that she understands true geek culture and secretly thinks she is better than the geeks.
An intimate "The Soul of a New Machine":
Ellen Ullmann has created a wonderful novel about the awkward interfaces between programmers and users, programming and aging, and technology and humanity.
The first chapter's description of the addiction on shared mind during small team development is a wonder.
Some pros, but mostly cons:
Ellen Ullman is obviously an adept coder and is able to describe both the great highs and great lows of being "close to the machine". However, as an actual author, she's a bit tedious and occasionally eye-rollingly vapid: her surprisingly generic sex scenes seem like quick masturbatory breaks, almost as if she felt the need to remind us that "programmers have sex lives, too". And she shows some occasional touches of her own techno-fear, especially when disparaging the nomenclature on a web-browser's... more info
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