Close to the Machine

The cult classic memoir of the California tech scene

As digital culture explodes into mainstream society in 1990s San Francisco, the intersections between people and technology become exponentially more complex. Programmer Ellen Ullman’s cult classic memoir offers a coder’s-eye view of the new world and its inhabitants.

In stunning, humane and prescient prose, Ullman describes the strange ecstasies of programming and the even stranger social dynamics of the emerging California tech scene, where the efficiencies of code can never be purged of the bugs of human desire.