Close to the Machine: Technophilia and Its Discontents

I first read this elegant memoir by a Bay Area software developer when it came out a quarter century ago, at a moment of technological optimism that seems far away now. But the book itself hardly feels dated at all—Ullman foresaw many things (the gig economy, crypto bros), but for the most part she wasn't trying to predict the future, just observing the strange new life she was at the heart of. And her writing has aged well too because of how close to the machine she was: not a literary outsider to the tech world but an engineer herself, hunting for that elusive, elemental satisfaction when the machine finally does what she had been asking it to. It's rare to have someone who loves working with machines so much who is able to tell us why.