The Soul Of A New Machine
COMPUTERS TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY
BOOK REPORT
The Soul of a New Machine' by Tracy Kidder
1981. New York: Avon Publishing
An underlying message
There is I believe a single quote from this book that encapsulates almost entirely its underlying message:
"No one ever pats anyone on the back around here. If de Castro ever patted me on the back, I'd probably quit"
Herein lies the soul, not a soul of silicon or of steel yet no less tangible. It is human soul that manifests itself through the endeavors of a team of computer designers working at the frontiers of human knowledge and engineering.
A vision of high-tech America
Celebrated for its insight into the world of corporate, high-technology America, the book earned the author a Pulitzer and a National Book Award in 1982. But this book holds far more for its reader, so much more than a mere insight, superficial, into the world of high-tech. Its pages are full of an insight that goes far deeper than that. I would venture that most of its insights are not about corporations, nor business, nor high-tech, but about people.
On the surface it gives the reader a factual and extremely detailed account of a team of engineers who between them create a new mini-computer (those machines you more often than not find in businesses and which have now in the most part been surpassed in power by the now ubiquitous desktop PC), a machine, advanced for its day (the story begins back in the late 1970's), but in many ways just another machine that, set against the developments in computing technology that have taken place since then, pales into insignificance performance-wise.
Interwoven throughout its pages are extremely accessible descriptions of the technology that these early machines encompassed, the tangible hardware comprising: the CPU (Central Processor Unit), the IP...
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