The Soul of a New Machine

Infobox Book
name = The Soul of a New Machine


image_caption =
author = Tracy Kidder
cover_artist =
country = United States
subject = Electrical engineering, Electronics
publisher = Little, Brown and Company
pub_date = July 1981
media_type = Hardcover
pages = 293 pp
isbn = ISBNT|978-0316491709
oclc = 7551785

"The Soul of a New Machine" is a non-fiction book, written by Tracy Kidder. It was published in 1981 and won a Pulitzer Prize and an American Book Award. It chronicles the true story of a computer design team racing to complete a next generation computer design under a blistering schedule and tremendous pressure.

Plot

The book opens with a turf war between two computer design groups within Data General Corporation, a minicomputer vendor in the 1970s. Most of the senior designers are assigned the "sexy" job of designing the next generation machine, which will be done in North Carolina. Their project (code-named "Fountainhead") is to give Data General a machine to compete with Digital Equipment Corporations' new VAX computer, which is starting to take over the new 32-bit minicomputer market. The few senior designers who are left in corporate headquarters at Westborough, MA are given the much more humble job to design enhancements of the existing product lines. Tom West, the leader of Westborough designers, starts a skunk works project which becomes a backup plan in case Fountainhead fails. Eventually, the skunk works project (code-named "Eagle") becomes the company's only hope in catching up with DEC. In order to complete the project on-time, West takes risks in not only new technology but also relying on new college graduates (who have never designed anything so complex) to make up the bulk of his design team. The book follows many of the designers as they give up every waking moment of their lives in order to design and debug the new machine on schedule.

Themes

The work environment described in the book is in many ways opposite of what is taught in business schools. Instead of top-down management, many of the innovations are started at the grass-roots level. Instead of management having to coerce labor to work harder, labor volunteers to complete the project on-time. The reason for this is that people will give their best when the work itself is challenging and rewarding. Many of the engineers state that, "They don't work for the money", meaning they work for the challenge of inventing and creating. The motivational system is akin to the game of pinball, the analogy that if you win this round, you get to play the game again; that is, build the next generation of computers.

The book's portrayal of engineers avoids the stereotypes of either mindless drones or of propeller-heads working on James-Bondian gadgets. Instead, the engineers are shown as inventors, problem solvers and occasionally artists.

Tom West practices the '"Mushroom Theory of Management" - "keeping them in the dark and feeding them shit." That is, isolating the design team from outside influences and instead using the fear of the unknown to motivate the team.

The "Soul" of the new machine comes from the dedicated managers and engineers who bring it to "life" with their endless hours of attention and toil.

Trivia

Several of the designers on the project went on to become luminaries within the computer industry. The architect of the Eagle project, Steve Wallach, would later found Convex Computer, one of the most successful minisupercomputer companies. Dave Epstein would become one of the leaders of NexGen, a company that helped AMD regain competitive footing against Intel.

The "Eagle" project becomes the "Eclipse MV/8000" product line. While successful, it never approached the market dominance of the DEC's VAX product line.

One engineer, Josh Rosen, who burned out fighting nanosecond-level timing bugs was seduced by the attraction of commune living and left to live in the country. His resignation note declared, "I’m going to a commune in Vermont and will deal with no unit of time shorter than a season." Or so he claimed -- the book indicates later on that he ended up designing computers at a different company.

One side effect of the book was to popularize throughout the computer world the term "canard", which had been in-house slang at Data General, with the meaning "mistaken and confused belief".

Edson deCastro, one of the founders of Data General (and sometimes known as 8-bit Teddy) also had a favorite theme for project Eagle that he would frequently demand of his engineers. It seems he wanted the MV/8000 (Eagle) backwardly compatible with the Data General Eclipse series of computers, but having come from DEC, he didn't want a "compatibility mode bit" as Digital Equipment Corporation had done with their VAX systems to make their product backwardly compatible with the PDP-11 series of computers. To this end he would often say: "I don't want an Eclipse with a BAG on the side of it!" meaning he didn't want a kludged-up Eclipse to become Data General's next generation product, the MV/8000.

Although Edson deCastro does mandate the absence of a mode-bit in the Eagle, "That's what I want, a thirty-two bit Eclipse and no mode bit." (p. 75 of June 2000 paperback edition) it is Steve Wallach that coined the phrase, "I'm not puttin' a bag on the side of the Eclipse." (p. 68)

References

[http://www.amazon.com/dp/0316491977 Amazon.com page] ISBN 0-316-49197-7

External links

* [http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.12/soul.html Wired article revisiting the book and the team after twenty years]
* [http://www.cs.clemson.edu/~mark/330/kidder/mv8000.jpgPicture of the Eagle]