Close to the Machine: Technophilia and Its Discontents


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    • Author : Ellen Ullman
    • Binding : Hardcover
    • Dewey Decimal Number : 005.1092
    • EAN : 9780872863378
    • ISBN : 0872863379
    • Label : City Lights Publishers
    • List Price : $21.95 (USD)
    • Manufacturer : City Lights Publishers
    • Number Of Items : 1
    • Number Of Pages : 189
    • Package Dimensions : 0.90 inches (Height) x 8.32 inches (Length) x 0.90 pounds (Weight) x 5.31 inches (Width)
    • Publication Date : 2001-01-01
    • Publisher : City Lights Publishers
    • Studio : City Lights Publishers

    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.

    - Amazon.com Review

    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.”"

    - Product Description

    Customer Reviews:

    Rated 3.5 stars Customers rated Close to the Machine: Technophilia and Its Discontents 3.5 stars out of 5.0 based on 29 reviews:

    • Self-Congratulatory Vacuous Fizz (Review Written in 2001)

      by Eric Platt - 2008-01-06  Rated 2 stars
      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 pursuit, with ultimately no social or spiritual redeeming values, then the purpose must be psychological (for her). Perhaps it is nothing less than the desperate attempt of an ego to maintain itself and create a self-justifying image. One possibility is that in her youth she had desires to be a writer, which were swallowed by her greed and immaturity. To her credit the writing is not bad, but the flip side of this is that one wonders what she could have contributed to culture if she'd put her energies into something other than the pursuit of money and computer knowledge and building ephemeral technology systems. She is capable of little sparks of inventiveness, and is obviously intelligent. But to what end? Only this: a little bit of entertainment mixed into a queasy brew of someone who remains only a hero in her own imagination. This book may perhaps serve as a historical record of the self-absorbed 80s and 90s culture and the speeded up, hollow life of a San Francisco computer consultant. But when the disastrous social and ecological consequences of our blind choices start to show up down the road (actually they are already showing up now in 2001), we may read books like this with a kind of morbid fascination. In the end it's all about the adrenalin rush and that's it. A periscope into one's person's experience of life through the values of the vacuous generation: the post-60s trend to give up on any values other than external ones. It's trendy, it's hip, but it has the approximate nutritional value of a low fat double latte with whip cream.

    • An intimate "The Soul of a New Machine"

      by Jonathan Peterson (atlanta, ga United States) - 2001-04-25  Rated 4 stars
      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

      by owlberg (Seattle, WA USA) - 2000-09-29  Rated 2 stars
      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 interface (she pooh-poohs the usage of "home" on the browser, apparenly forgetting that "home" has also been the traditional name for users' directories on UNIX systems). Probably a good head-nodding read for legacy techies, the post-web generation will most likely sigh "Oh, get OVER yourself" a few times before flinging this one across the room and going back to reading WIRED.

    • "Problems being exploited, then commended"

      by - 1999-11-11  Rated 2 stars
      Ullman makes a mockery of human existence in her book "Close to the Machine." Ullman characterizes the human race as a dependent, weak minded, constituency of Dr. Frankensteins, who have created a "monster they can't handle." Through her own personal experiences with the computer, and with love, Ullman represents the ultimately "robotic-human" she feels we have turned into. Ullman laughs in the face of a society she sees as crumbling in the wake of computers. Ullman, by her own, admission is a part of this crumbling mass. The apathetic tendencies of the modern day, computerized, moron Ullman characterizes, are evident in the number of people who view this as a "good book," not as a warning.

    • Avoid this book, or not.

      by - 1999-10-09  Rated 1 stars
      Summary of this book: Queer woman ranting on and on about programming. The book is primarily about her pointless (not contributing much to the plot) conversations between her and other programmers, using buzzwords every other word. The plot seems to have been an afterthought, and is quite dull.If you're a non-programmer type, and would like to be up do date with the buzzwords you throw around left and right at the office, then this is the book for you! Just think: tomorrow you could be saying things like "integrating enterprise wide solutions and reengineering infrastructure to implement a third tier capability of empowering a paradigm!"

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