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Ellen Ullman Quotes

Total quotes: 5
“Once we were impressed by buildings; now we are impressed by virtual on-line spaces, that’s all.”
— Ellen Ullman, Close to the Machine: Technophilia and Its Discontents
Tagged: Technology, Architecture, Space
“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.”
— Ellen Ullman, Close to the Machine: Technophilia and Its Discontents
Tagged: Technology, Simulacrum, Projections of Self, Systems
“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 to.”
— Ellen Ullman, Close to the Machine: Technophilia and Its Discontents
Tagged: Technology, Spreadsheets, The internet, Click, Tools, Condescending
“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 “virtually” was the sense of the false note, something missing, an ineffable quality of not-quite-happy.”
— Ellen Ullman, Close to the Machine: Technophilia and Its Discontents
Tagged: Technology, Virtual, What Is Real?, What is true?, The internet
“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, order, rule, and clarity. It is as if we took the game of chess and declared it the highest order of human existence.”
— Ellen Ullman, Close to the Machine: Technophilia and Its Discontents
Tagged: Technology, Simulacrum, Projections of Self, Systems
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