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| TechNation Quotes + in book form + excerpts + interviews + articles |
"Software Consulting means always coming in on other people's problems, other people's work. I come in when they're already in a crisis. They wouldn't be hiring me if things were going swimmingly, and I leave before everything is fixed...
"[I wanted] to attempt a generational view [of commerce.] You see, my father's relationship to the machinery of capitalism was his feeling, starting out as a poor boy who grew up in Bedford-Stuyvesant, that he could own a piece of Wall Street, and be successful. My generation, we thought we could smash the machine...
"A lot of the readers of this book took it to be much more about technology, than I intended it to be, whereas I meant for it to be about the whole machinery of commerce, the whole machinery of economic life....
"There is this relentless need to have a new product come out once a quarter or twice a year. No one is allowed to sit with a product for a year or two, and really shake it out, and get the bugs out of it, and really figure what features are really useful, and what are not useful, and where should it go from here...
"There's two aspects to [why computer professionals seem to eventually tire of computers.] One is middle age. At a certain point, you take stock. It's unseemly after a certain age to keep chasing after new, young things, and in a sense, staying current in computing is somewhat equivalent to that....June 3, 1998
"I've been involved with technology of one sort or another, since the early 70's -- when the world was going to change because it was on the computer, and I've been following the changes in technology in this profession all this time.....
"The first thing to understand if you are in the profession [of computer programming] is that the process of learning new things is endless.....
"I was talking to this elderly businessman about how his business has fewer and fewer customers, and he says, 'It's the modems.' It was the most startling thing. He just looked at me, and said, 'It's the modems.' Whoa! He's got it!....
"Many years ago, my father bought some real estate in lower Manhattan, [since] it was his idea that Wall Street was the center of the economic world, and in his time, that definitely was true....
"I didn't want to say that there is nothing to [the idea that computers reflect humans], because these machines are our creations, and 'making tools' is one of our most special natures. We speak, and we make tools. These are essential human activities...
"Yes, I'm a discontent, but really it is 'discontents' - plural. There are a lot of people trumpeting the computer revolution, but the discontent is that [the computer] is a projection of a very narrow part of who we are...
"As computers have become more and more a part of life, what we call 'computer programming' has changed alot. It used to be that it was something sitting very, very close to the machine, such as writing operating systems...
"About that stereotype of engineers and programmers who don't have a life ... like all stereotypes, there's some truth to it. After all, if you're someone who likes staying up all night with a bunch of machines, and you find satisfaction out of that, it's not going to leave you a lot of time to have a varied social life...
"Technophilia is, very simply, the love of technology. It's been used for people who have become so enamored of all this computer technology that they think somehow it will save us...
Out of Time: Reflections on the Programming Life
The dumbing-down of programming
What she saw at the revolution:
author of "Close to the Machine,"
technocritic Ellen Ullman sings
the body electric. By Suzanne Menghraj; the CitySearch SanFrancisco Interview.
Pattern-Matching in Technology: Analysts consider the sectors that make
up the Tech 250 and the valuation
patterns they have followed.
By Clara Basile and Ellen Ullman, The Red Herring magazine, November 1994