Job & Edu

Close to the Machine: Technophilia and Its Discontents

From City Lights Publishers

Author : Ellen Ullman
Binding : Paperback
DeweyDecimalNumber : 005.1092
EAN : 9780872863323
Edition : 2nd
ISBN : 0872863328
Label : City Lights Publishers
Manufacturer : City Lights Publishers
NumberOfPages : 189
ProductTypeName : ABIS_BOOK
PublicationDate : 2001-01-01
Publisher : City Lights Publishers
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Customer Reviews

Rating:
Summary: Self-Congratulatory Vacuous Fizz (Review Written in 2001)
Comment: 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.
Rating:
Summary: An intimate "The Soul of a New Machine"
Comment: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Some pros, but mostly cons
Comment: 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.
Rating:
Summary: "Problems being exploited, then commended"
Comment: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Avoid this book, or not.
Comment: 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!"