Books like Close to the Machine by Ellen Ullman
In *Close to the Machine*, Ellen Ullman tells the story of her life as a software engineer and entrepreneur. Based in a live‑work loft in San Francisco’s Multimedia Gulch, she reflects on the intellectual allure of coding—its abstract logic, algorithms, and networks—while affirming that human desires, relationships, and communication cannot be reduced to lines of code or digital clicks. Ullman interrogates how the burgeoning computer industry shapes society and the individual, arguing that cyberculture is neither a blanket doom nor a utopian promise but a fragile creation that mirrors human uncertainty.
First publish date: 1997
Genre: Biography & Autobiography/Biography
Authors: Ellen Ullman
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