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Life in Code
Life in Code: A Personal History of Technology | Ellen Ullman
14 posts | 5 read | 25 to read
The never-more-necessary return of one of our most vital and eloquent voices on technology and culture, the author of the seminal Close to the Machine The last twenty years have brought us the rise of the internet, the development of artificial intelligence, the ubiquity of once unimaginably powerful computers, and the thorough transformation of our economy and society. Through it all, Ellen Ullman lived and worked inside that rising culture of technology, and in Life in Code she tells the continuing story of the changes it wrought with a unique, expert perspective. When Ellen Ullman moved to San Francisco in the early 1970s and went on to become a computer programmer, she was joining a small, idealistic, and almost exclusively male cadre that aspired to genuinely change the world. In 1997 Ullman wrote Close to the Machine, the now classic and still definitive account of life as a coder at the birth of what would be a sweeping technological, cultural, and financial revolution. Twenty years later, the story Ullman recounts is neither one of unbridled triumph nor a nostalgic denial of progress. It is necessarily the story of digital technologys loss of innocence as it entered the cultural mainstream, and it is a personal reckoning with all that has changed, and so much that hasnt. Life in Code is an essential text toward our understanding of the last twenty yearsand the next twenty.
Amazon Indiebound Barnes and Noble WorldCat Goodreads LibraryThing
review
Robotswithpersonality
Robotswithpersonality
Life in Code: A Personal History of Technology | Ellen Ullman
post image
Mehso-so

As with basically every tech book I've ever read, I can't help but wish I was getting the same perspective on the most recent developments. 2017 is starting to feel like a long time ago, especially in internet time. 1/?

Robotswithpersonality 2/? There are personal details, but there are chapters that read like magazine articles or essays, including citation of other sources and what appear to be recounting interviews or discussion with experts/people in the fields in question. Kind of a mix of chronological and topic specific organization peppered with flashbacks. 6mo
Robotswithpersonality 3/? There is some wonder and some nostalgia, but there's also 'wow, this boys club really sucks', and 'I have (legitimate) concerns about what all this tech is doing to us as humans' both then and now.
Also a fair bit of how shitty expectations/labour practices were (are?) for programmers, and a good dose of 'they don't make 'em like they used to'.
Interesting to get this POV on Y2K, the dot-com bubble. 6mo
Robotswithpersonality 4/? Always love to wander through speculation about true artificial intelligence and tackling the real barriers to creating such, the larger questions about what humans know about consciousness, sentience, intelligence that could possibly be replicated in machines. The discussion of how a living being, an animal, is embodied directly affecting the development of the mind, was particularly fascinating. 6mo
Robotswithpersonality 5/? The moments where Ullman made a point of hoping/encouraging increases in diversity in the field of programming, in technological solutions that aid a better, fairer society were somewhat watered down by the pessism pervading much of her reflections.
Overall I think this book was a bit of a mismatch for me as a reader. 6mo
Robotswithpersonality 6/6 I'm here for robots and social change, but Ullman's painting more a dystopian vision of the future than a solar punk one, and merrily dives into computer talk when I don't actually care about/comprehend the nitty gritty (I'm part of the problem! 🤦🏼‍♂️). Lopsided choice on my part. Thank goodness the library lets me make these booboos without buyer's remorse. 6mo
7 likes5 comments
quote
Robotswithpersonality
Robotswithpersonality
Life in Code: A Personal History of Technology | Ellen Ullman
post image

Mood. Vocational mood, but also, life mood. ☺️

4 likes
quote
Robotswithpersonality
Robotswithpersonality
Life in Code: A Personal History of Technology | Ellen Ullman
post image

Poor computers, just victims of our changeable human whims. 🖥️😵‍💫

4 likes
quote
Robotswithpersonality
Robotswithpersonality
Life in Code: A Personal History of Technology | Ellen Ullman
post image

Part of a chapter the author wrote in 1998...I'm just gonna leave this here...🤦🏼‍♂️

Singout THIS. I hate living in the era of electronic appliances that I can‘t take apart and repair myself. 6mo
3 likes1 comment
blurb
Robotswithpersonality
Robotswithpersonality
Life in Code: A Personal History of Technology | Ellen Ullman
post image

Love the cover colour way for memoirs by women talking about their chosen field. ♥️🤍

4 likes1 stack add
review
LaurenAsh
LaurenAsh
Life in Code: A Personal History of Technology | Ellen Ullman
post image
Pickpick

Borrowed this from the library...I'm going to buy it so I can always have it around.

14 likes
review
daniwithtea
daniwithtea
Life in Code: A Personal History of Technology | Ellen Ullman
post image
Mehso-so

This was an odd read (or in my case, an odd listen). The history was at times interesting, but overall it was more “snapshots of the last 30 years in tech” than it was a memoir of a woman in STEM. 12/100 for the year.

7 likes
blurb
daniwithtea
daniwithtea
Life in Code: A Personal History of Technology | Ellen Ullman
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Pondering the TBR shelf in preparation for #24in48.

9 likes
blurb
daniwithtea
daniwithtea
Life in Code: A Personal History of Technology | Ellen Ullman

Having flashbacks with this...corporate clients running Windows NT, Slackware being the popular Linux distro.

4 likes
blurb
daniwithtea
daniwithtea
Life in Code: A Personal History of Technology | Ellen Ullman
post image

Quiet day at work today, so I pulled this up on Libby (it‘s work-related...ish.) Not a very engaging narrator, but it‘s interesting.

5 likes
blurb
CatchMyBookBreath
CatchMyBookBreath
Life in Code: A Personal History of Technology | Ellen Ullman
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#riotgrams Day 3 - Three Word Titles. I chose to include "the" and ignore anything that sounds like it should have a semicolon. ? Y'all made me break up my color coding! ???

26 likes
blurb
MrBook
MrBook
Life in Code: A Personal History of Technology | Ellen Ullman
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#TBRtemptation post 7! Just released. In 1997, Ulam wrote the classic "Close To the Machine", an account of the lives of computer programmers such as herself from the 1970s-'90s. Now, she shows what the next 20 years has been like for her and her squad of socially awkward West Coast geeks. This is a series of essays--not all of them positive--about how we got to now through the Internet's rise and so much more. #blameLitsy #blameMrBook ?

Zelma Sounds very interesting. 7y
DuckOfDoom As an computer science engineer, I think this is a must read for me. The first one as well! 7y
61 likes13 stack adds2 comments