Memoirs are all the rage in the book biz; among them, fortunately, is Ellen Ullman’s Close to the Machine: Technophilia and Its Discontents. Ullman comes with her tech bona fides intact (she is, after all, a seasoned software engineer). But she also comes with novel material: the not-meek musings of an aging girl geek.
The "discontents" of the title are programmers: those who navigate between the world as humans understand it and the world as computers understand it, consigned to what Ullman calls "a strange state of disjunction." In that latter world, "human needs must cross the line into code," she writes. "They must pass through this semipermeable membrane where urgency, fear, and hope are filtered out, and only reason travels across."
These disjunctions are at play in Ullman's life and in the central intimacy of her identity as a coder: her closeness to the machine. We see the seduction at the heart of programming: Embedded in the hijinks and hieroglyphics are the esoteric mysteries of the human mind.
It's partly Ullman's use of language that conveys the sexy jazz of coding. In this duet with coworker Joel, they stare down a stubborn bug: "We lock eyes. We barely breathe. For a slim moment, we are together in a universe where two human beings can simultaneously understand the statement 'If space is numeric!'"
Back-and-forth cuts make the book feel like a fast-clip film. But sometimes this leaves the narrative arc wanting. The work also flags when it veers off into the confessional: sex with Brian, her cocksure lover, for example. I ate up descriptions like "His lovemaking was tantric, algorithmic," but found myself asking, "Why am I reading this?"
There is an answer to that question: In Ullman's anxieties about her affair, in her contemplations of her late father's belief in the machinery of capital, and in her sense of "self-made solitude," she is registering the uncertainties of a fortysomething programmer entering the Mid-Life Crisis.
A team of young coders comes to replace her on a job. The blessing-and-curse of technology – obsolescence – shouts to her like the all-caps subject field of an email: FROM ADOLESCENCE TO OBSOLESCENCE – WHAM!
Close to the Machine: Technophilia and Its Discontents, by Ellen Ullman: US$21.95. City Lights Books: +1 (415) 362 1901.
This article originally appeared in the December issue of Wired magazine.
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