Life in Code

Life in Code A Personal History of Technology

Ellen Ullman2017
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 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. Life in Code is an essential text toward our understanding of the last twenty years—and the next twenty.
Sign up to use

Reviews

Photo of Andrew Louis
Andrew Louis@hyfen
4 stars
Feb 6, 2023
Photo of ben wolfson
ben wolfson@birdbrain10
4 stars
May 7, 2022
Photo of Colton McCurdy
Colton McCurdy@mccurdyc
3.5 stars
Aug 12, 2022
Photo of Michael Springer
Michael Springer@djinn-n-juice
4 stars
May 1, 2023
Photo of Sang Park
Sang Park@sparky
2 stars
Jan 8, 2023
Photo of Tiffany
Tiffany@scientiffic
4 stars
Sep 26, 2022
Photo of Coleen Bachi
Coleen Bachi@cbachi27
4 stars
Aug 31, 2022
Photo of Mu-An Chiou
Mu-An Chiou@muan
5 stars
Jun 21, 2022
Photo of Remi Sands
Remi Sands @rem7emmi
4 stars
Dec 7, 2021
Photo of Celine Nguyen ✿
Celine Nguyen ✿@celinenguyen
5 stars
Nov 11, 2021
Photo of Nick Simson
Nick Simson@nsmsn
4 stars
May 25, 2021