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Synopsis
Mixing memoir with tech manifesto, Ellen Ullman explores the personal, professional, and
philosophical ramifications of living in the pressure cooker of Silicon Valley.
Review
As a fortysomething female (and former communist) running an independent
computer programming business, Ellen Ullman offers a unique perspective on the mid-'90s
dot-com boom in her brilliant memoir/tech treatise, Close to the Machine. It's a rare
feat for an author to mix personal memoir with a penetrating social critique successfully,
but Ullman, writing both of her private and professional experiences as a techie and
as a woman, manages to straddle this line eloquently.
Examining the relationship between human and machine, Ullman provides an insider's look
at the computer industry and those mysterious programmers who keep everything humming,
while examining her own sexual adventures and responses to personal obstacles beyond the
the workplace. In writing about a world in which not much happens outside of the quiet
human/machine interface, with strings of 1s and 0s standing in for reality, she nevertheless
manages to bring life to the process of coding. Having worked as a computer programmer since the late
'70s, Ullman charts how the constant flux in the computing industry — learning new languages
that are sure to become outdated soon enough — is both similar to, and distinct from, the
changing languages of human interaction.
In revealing her private life so openly, she provides an interesting foil for the pure
logic of computer programming. At the same time she examines the often muddled relationship
between the professional and personal, and how this line has been consistently blurred in
recent years. In the end she provides no answers, as there are likely none to give, but
her journey provides an insightful and thoroughly entertaining philosophical memoir. (PM)
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Synopsis
A comparison of Mau's new Massive Change and Fuller's seminal Critical Path
— two books that take on the challenge of examining the future of
information and culture.
Review
When architect-designer-theorist R. Buckminster Fuller published
Critical Path in 1982 — a year before his death — he summed up a life's work
theorizing about the crises that face humanity, and cemented his reputation as one
of the planet's most innovative thinkers. In addition to inventing the geodesic dome
and the Dymaxion world map, Fuller is known for a unique philosophy anchored in
both individuality and sustainability — the latter being a radical notion at the time.
Critical Path is a trove of futurist thinking that predicts, among other things,
the ubiquity of computers; but the bulk of its ideas remain dormant, still awaiting
discovery. Some theories, such as his declaration that Southeast Asia is the true cradle
of human civilization, are thrilling if yet unproven. Others, such as the viability
of the geodesic doming of midtown Manhattan, sound as attractive today as ever. The book
reads like an amalgam of Fuller's life and work, which influenced generations of creators,
including leading Toronto-based designer-theorist Bruce Mau, whose Institute Without
Boundaries (IWB) takes on Fuller's challenge to forge a new breed of designer.
With the publication of Massive Change, Bruce Mau and IWB launched their own future-forward
design philosophy. The appropriately named Massive Change project, of which the book is
a fragment, includes a traveling exhibit, an evolving website, a radio program, and a
slew of other components. The book itself is a compendium of insight from some of today's
leading sages on sustainability. Binding ideas to their economic lives, individual chapters
on urbanization, movement, energy, information, image, market, material, military,
manufacturing, living, wealth, and politics tackle the question of not what we do
but how we do it.
It is reassuring to see two books by leading visual thinkers fearlessly engaging
the issues faced by present and future designers. Although Fuller and Mau take some
different approaches, both refuse to see their mega-projects as part of some sort
of utopian futurism, but instead, as viable solutions couched in pragmatism. Subverting
Timothy Leary's '60s axiom to "Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out," Massive Change's
website shouts: 1. Learn, 2. Act. (HV)
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