Close to the Machine by Ellen Ullman

Author:Ellen Ullman [Ullman, Ellen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Non-Fiction, Computers & Technology, Tech Culture & Computer Literacy
ISBN: 978-1-250-02458-9
Publisher: Picador
Published: 2012-02-28T05:00:00+00:00

[5] NEW, OLD, AND MIDDLE AGE

IT HAD TO HAPPEN TO ME SOMETIME: SOONER OR later I would have to lose sight of the cutting edge. That moment every technical person fears—the fall into knowledge exhaustion, obsolescence, techno-fuddy-dud-dyism—there was no reason to think I could escape it forever. Still, I hadn’t expected it so soon. And not there: not at the AIDS project, where I had fancied myself the very deliverer of high technology to the masses.

It happened in the way of all true-life humiliations: when you think you’re better than the people around you. I had decided to leave the project; I agreed to help find another consultant, train another team. There I was, finding my own replacement. I called a woman I thought was capable, experienced—and my junior. I thought I was doing her a favor; I thought she should be grateful.

She arrived with an entourage of eight, a group she had described on the telephone as “Internet heavy-hitters from Palo Alto.” They were all in their early thirties. The men had excellent briefcases, wore beautiful suits, and each breast pocket bulged ever so slightly with what was later revealed to be a tiny, exquisite cellular phone. One young man was so blonde, so pale-eyed, so perfectly white, he seemed to have stepped out of a propaganda film for National Socialism. Next to him was a woman with blond frosted hair, chunky real-gold bracelets, red nails, and a short skirt, whom I took for a marketing type; she turned out to be in charge of “physical network configuration.” This group strutted in with all the fresh-faced drive of technocapitalism, took their seats beneath the AIDS prevention posters (“Warriors wear shields with men and women!” “I take this condom everywhere I bring my penis!”), and began their sales presentation.

They were pushing an intranet. This is a system using all the tools of the Internet—Web browser, net server—but on a private network. It is all the rage, it is cool, it is what everyone is talking about. It is the future and, as the woman leading the group made clear, what I have been doing is the past. “An old-style enterprise system” is what she called Jerry as I had built it, “a classic.”

My client was immediately awed by their wealth, stunned silent by their self-assurance. The last interviewee had been a nervous man in an ill-fitting suit, shirt washed but not quite ironed, collar crumpled over shiny polyester tie. His entire programming career had been spent in the nonprofit sector, doing desktop programming. For him, the AIDS project would have been a large technical step up. He was eager and attentive and respectful. Now here came these new visitors, with their “physical network configuration” specialist, their security expert, their application designer, and their “technology paradigm.” And they came with an attitude—the AIDS project would be lucky to have them.

It was not only their youth and self-assurance that bothered me, not simply their high-IQ arrogance (at one point, to our disbelieving hilarity, they proposed fingerprinting AIDS clients “to help with the ID problem” 14).

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