Research Catalog

Title

Life in code : a personal history of technology / Ellen Ullman.

Author

Ullman, Ellen

Publication

• New York : MCD, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2017.
• ©2017

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

viii, 306 pages : illustrations; 22 cm

Summary

"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 [this book] she tells the continuing story of the changes it wrought with a unique, expert perspective. When 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 technology's loss of innocence as it entered the cultural mainstream, and it is a personal reckoning with all that has changed, and so much that hasn't. [This book] is essential to our understanding of the last twenty years-- and the next twenty."--Jacket.

Alternative Title

Personal history of technology

Subjects

• Computer programmers
• Internet
• Biography
• Ullman, Ellen
• Autobiographies
• COMPUTERS > Social Aspects
• Computer programmers > United States > Biography
• United States
• Internet > History
• BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY > Science & Technology
• TECHNOLOGY & ENGINEERING > Social Aspects
• History
• Computer programming > History

Genre/Form

• Autobiographies.
• Biography.
• History.

Contents

Part one. The programming life -- Outside of time : reflections on the programming life -- Come in, CQ -- The dumbing down of programming : some thoughts on programming, knowing, and the nature of "easy" -- What we were afraid of as we feared Y2K -- Part two. The rise and first fall of the Internet -- The museum of me -- Fiber optic nights -- Off the high -- To catch a falling knife -- Part three. Life, artificial -- Programming the post-human : computer science redefines "life" -- Is Sadie the Cat a trick? -- Memory and megabytes -- Dining with robots -- Part four. Three stories about what we owe the past -- While I was away -- Close to the mainframe -- The party line -- Part five. The hand that writes the code -- Programming for the millions -- Boom two : a farewell.

Call Number

JFD 17-5704

ISBN

• 9780374534516
• 0374534519

LCCN

2017012764

OCLC

987376102

Author

Ullman, Ellen, author.

Title

Life in code : a personal history of technology / Ellen Ullman.

Publisher

New York : MCD, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2017.

Copyright Date

©2017

Edition

First edition.

Type of Content

text

still image

Type of Medium

unmediated

Type of Carrier

volume

Research Call Number

JFD 17-5704