There was a time (still in living memory) when “virtual” was a free word in the English language. It meant “almost true” or “for all intents and purposes, but not completely, not truly.” One could say, “I was virtually happy.” Were you truly happy? No, you weren’t, because adhering to the…
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Ellen Ullman
Ellen Ullman is an American computer programmer and author. She has written novels as well as articles for various publications, including Harper's Magazine, Wired, the New York Times and Salon. She owned a consulting firm and worked as technology commentator for NPR's All Things Considered. Her essays and novels analyze the human side of the world of computer programming. Her breakthrough book was non-fiction: Close to the Machine: Technophilia and its Discontents. 2Life Ullman's adoptive father's family included computer scientists and mathematicians who had a major impact on her decision to pursue software engineering, a field for which she did "not have native talent." Ullman earned a B.A. in English at Cornell University in the early 1970s. She began working professionally in 1978 as a programmer of EDI applications and graphical user interfaces that preceded Microsoft Windows. She eventually began writing about her experiences as a programmer. From 1994 until 1996, she published articles in Harper's Magazine and in the collections Resisting the Virtual Life and Wired Women. In 1995 she wrote an essay, Out of Time: Reflections on the Programming Lif
The corollary of constant change is ignorance.
We think we are creating the system, but the system is also creating us. We build the system, we live in its midst, and we are changed.
We think we are creating the system for our own purposes. We believe we are making it in our own image. We call the microprocessor the “brain”; we say the machine has “memory.” But the computer is not really like us. It is a projection of a very slim part of ourselves: that portion devoted to logic,…
We have a “presence” on the Web: we are therefore real.
What is it about the Internet, with its pretty graphics and simple clicks, that makes users feel so inundated; and about the spreadsheet—so complicated a tool—that makes them bold? The received wisdom about user-friendliness is challenged here. Human beings, I think, do not like to be condescended…
Once we were impressed by buildings; now we are impressed by virtual on-line spaces, that’s all.
The new drug: the instant, the now, the worldwide.
The disorder of the desk, the floor; the yellow Post-it notes everywhere; the whiteboards covered with scrawl: all this is the outward manifestation of the messiness of human thought. The messiness cannot go into the program; it piles up around the programmer.