Close to the Machine

‘Astonishing… impossible to put down’ - San Francisco Chronicle‘A classic of twentieth-century digital culture literature… Part memoir, part techie mantra, part observation on the ever-changing world of computer science…[Ullman is] a strong woman standing up to, and facing down, ‘obsolescence’ in two different, particularly unforgiving worlds-modern technology and modern society’ - New York Times Book Review ‘A remarkable document that is both the best account of the intimate experience of computation by a person and a saved slice of historical memory, of that almost lost moment before everything went digitally nuts’ - Jaron Lanier ‘By turns hilarious and sobering, this slim gem of a book chronicles the Silicon Valley way of life… full of delicately profound insights into work, money, love, and the search for a life that matters’ - Newsweek

Ellen Ullman is the author of Close to the Machine, a memoir; and the novels The Bug and By Blood. She lives in San Francisco.