Close to the Machine

As a San Francisco software engineer, Amy Ullman has written herself into the digital universe. Immersed in the abstract world of information, algorithms and networks, she would like to give in to the seductions of the programmers' world, where weird logic dreamers like herself live close to the machine. Still, she is keenly aware that body and soul are not mechanical: desire, love and the need to communicate face-to-face don't easily fit into lines of code or clicks in a Web browser. As Ullman sees it, the cool world of cyberculture is neither the death of civilization nor its salvation. It is vulnerable—and profoundly human—creation.