Close to the Machine - Technophilia and Its Discontents

Ellen Ullman's humane, insightful, and beautifully written memoir is a cult classic exploring the ever-complicating intersections between people and technology. Writing from 1990s San Francisco, where she ran a programming business that served everyone from credit card companies to AIDS clinics, she describes the strange ecstasies of programming and the even stranger social dynamics of the emerging California tech world, where she crosses paths with the men and women of the emerging internet: sleeping with them, competing with them, trying to get them to debug her systems and decode her desires. Equally evocative of the messiness of life and the artful efficiency of code, Close to the Machine is a deeply personal, prescient account of working at the forefront of computing.

About the author

Ellen Ullman's Close to the Machine, a memoir of her time as a software engineer during the early years of the internet revolution, became a cult classic and established her as a writer of considerable talent; with her second book, The Bug, she became an acclaimed and vital novelist; By Blood is her third. All three titles are published in the UK by Pushkin Press. Her essays and opinion pieces have been widely published in venues such as Harper's, The New York Times, Salon, and Wired. She lives in San Francisco.

Product details

• Authors: Ellen Ullman, Ellen (Author) Ullman, Ullman Ellen
• Assisted by: Lanier Jaron (Introduction)
• Publisher: Pushkin Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Release: 28.08.2025
• EAN: 9781805331957
• ISBN: 978-1-80533-195-7
• No. of pages: 208
• Subjects: Natural sciences, medicine, IT, technology > IT, data processing > IT; Non-fiction book > Nature, technology > Biographies, autobiographies; Social sciences, law, business > Business > General, dictionaries; BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Business, Autobiography: business & industry, COMPUTERS / Software Development & Engineering / General, COMPUTERS / Programming / General, Computer programming / software engineering, Autobiography: business and industry, Computer Programming / Software Development