Close to the machine : technophilia and its discontents : a memoir

201 Pages·1997·41.211 MB·English

by  Ellen Ullman

Praise for
CLOSE TO THE MACHINE
"This book is a little masterpiece, an exquisitely melan
choly 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 it could have
been written before. Here is the perfect way to say good
bye to the millennium."
- Andrei Codrescu
"Computer programmers are remaking the world. Here is
ground truth about that world-making and brilliant insider
critique of it. The reader vibrates between delight and
alarm on every page. It's wonderful to see such a blending
of code craft and word craft (and no small measure of life
craft) in the author. It's a perfect book for City Lights
longstanding purveyor of subversive honesty and art."
- Stewart Brand
"Ullman's work has the keenness of all my favorite writ
ing .... Here, her talent enables readers to explore inti
mately, and without forced profundity, one of the biggest
questions of our time: What is it about the numerical,
seemingly inhuman world of computing that holds such
powerful, wholly human allure."
- Brad Wieners, editor, Wired Books
"Ullman's story oflife in the electronic world is a reckon
ing, a warning, a seduction. It is also very funny."
- Rebecca Brown
"There are no crazed hackers here; no zen-master soft
ware moguls; no media stereotypes; just a wonderfully
written book about Ullman's days and nights at the heart
of the new machine. I recommend it with unfettered
enthusiasm."
-Jon Carroll, San Francisco Chronicle
"Ullman wittily spills the beans about the technology on
which we all depend."
-Publishers Weekly
"Ellen Ullman, a software engineer, writes with the
energy of Boswell, the clarity of Orwell, and the warmth
of Montaigne. You may wonder: how could a software
engineer write so well? Ullman is a wonderful writer, and
Close to the Machine is a wonderful book."
-John Gehl, editor, Educom Review
"Close to the Machine so very accurately paints the never
ending race a programmer must run to make these (damn)
wonderful computers useful to humanity. I found myself
nodding in violent agreement at her concise summaries of
programming hell."
- Dan Lynch, chairman, Cybercash
Discontents
c=
Ellen Ullman
City Liihts Books
San Francisco
© 1997 by Ellen Ullman
All Rights Reserved
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Cover design: Rex Ray
Book design: Nancy J. Peters
Typography: Harvest Graphics
Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Ullman, Ellen.
Close to the machine: technophilia and its discontents / by
Ellen Ullman.
p. cm.
ISBN: 0-87286-337-9 (cl).-ISBN 0-87286-332-8 (pb)
1. Ullman, Ellen. 2. Computer programmers - Biography.
I. Title.
QA76.2.U43A3 1997
005.1'092 - dc21
DB]
97-27244
CIP
City Lights Books are available to bookstores through our primary
distributor: Subterranean Company, P.O. Box 160,265 S. 5th St.,
Monroe, OR 97456. 541-847-5274. ToU-free orders 800-274-7826.
FAX [phone]. Our books are also available through library
jobbers and regional distributors. For personal orders and catalogs,
please write to City Lights Books, 261 Columbus Avenue,
San Francisco, CA 94133.
CITY LIGHTS BOOKS are edited by Lawrence Ferlinghetti and
Nancy J. Peters and published at the City Lights Bookstore,
261 Columbus Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94133.
Acknowledgments
With unending gratitude for the help of Clara Basile,
Naomi Epel, and Jeanette Gurevitch.
Three short sections of this book, in a slightly dif
ferent form, were first presented as the commentaries "On
Becoming an Old Programmer," "My Virtual Company,"
and "In Their Fifties" on the National Public Radio pro
gram ''All Things Considered."
This book describes real people and events. In many
cases, however, names and identifying details have been
changed, and events slightly rearranged, to give a measure
of privacy to the individuals involved.
For Nancy
To my fathtr

Contents
[0] Space Is Numeric 1
[1] Transactions 17
[2] Sushi 39
[3] Real Estate 53
[4] Software and Suburbia 65
[5] New, Old, and Middle Age 95
[6] Virtuality 123
[7] Money 149
[8] The Passionate Engineer 175
[9] Driving 185