“Before the advent of the Web, if you wanted to sustain a belief in far-fetched ideas, you had to go out into the desert, or live on a compound in the mountains, or move from one badly furnished room to another in a series of safe houses.”

American computer programmer and author

Ellen Ullman is an American computer programmer and author. She became widely known for her 1997 memoir, Close to the Machine: Technophilia and Its Discontents. The book draws on her experience as a woman working in a male-dominated programming field at the start of the personal computer era. She later wrote novels, including The Bug and By Blood, both of which were named New York Times Notable Books. Ullman has also worked as a consultant to software companies and as a technology commentator for NPR's All Things Considered. Her writing often reflects on computing, work, and the culture around technology.