The book is titled, “Soul of a New Machine” largely because it is the blood, sweat and tears of a number of individuals that goes into the building of the new 32-bit microcomputer, Eagle. Each of these individuals is unique and, to borrow a line from Gudiel, leaves an imprint of who they are on the new machine (or at least the process of building the new machine).

The definition of a soul, in modern philosophy, is an interesting notion in its own right. It conjures up images of some ethereal substance or spirits. One of my favorite episodes of The Simpsons (and there are many) is when Bart Simpson sells his soul to Milhouse for the meager price of five dollars. In the end Bart is left running around town (almost lifeless) because he feels he no longer has a soul. In “Soul of a New Machine” none of the engineers sold out and in the end, they felt satisfaction in their creation.
 
Additionally, I wonder if our fellow music mates are thinking how this book relates to soul music. Soul music is a type of rhythm and blues. This can be just one more way to describe West’s team of engineers. They are a bunch of individuals singing the same sad song (a.k.a. the blues), but they love it. They do not feel that they are getting paid enough, but they don’t care. They embrace the pain that Eagle causes them and come to depend and identify themselves through the project. Rhythm is an inescapable term when working on large collaborative projects. If an engineer comes in early one morning to find that the work he did was reversed (without rhyme or reason) there is no rhythm and the project wouldn’t move along as quickly as it did. From this idea, I pull my favorite concept from the book. Many of the engineers felt they worked best alone, but it was together that they felt they accomplished more.

Kidder’s style of Writing
Tracy Kidder’s style of writing conjures up a recurring theme in systems theory, that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. This theory considers emergent properties that exist in a system once it is completed. Kidder’s writing style reverses this theory to show that a machine is not just made up of parts, but individual ingenuity (as discussed in the prior section). And throughout the book, the emergent properties of the engineers are recurring themes.

Kidder’s writing style is quite unique, and I can see why he won a Pulitzer for this work. Kidder is able to recreate the individuals to make them unique. I worked in information technology for a number of years and although I was no engineer the notion that all techies are alike is echoed through the hallways. Here is a writer who shows that race, creed and sex aside, all individuals are unique. Each has a unique story to tell about their specific role in the world. Kidder gets at the heart of what it means to be part of a team, individuality.

Favorite Character
As a systems developer (but by no way an engineer) I find it hard to look at the individuals in this book as mere characters. To me this was satisfying because no longer are these engineers a bunch of geeks but real people. Some are outdoorsman and family men. They are each real-life individuals and Kidder’s style of writing brings this out. He gives short bio and work styles of each and brings to life the essence of the individual. As a systems developer for a number of years on Wall Street, Kidder’s style is depiction of the effects circa 1980 is reminiscent of the software team I was once a member of. And as a result I was hoping there would be a character a lot like myself, but I couldn’t find him (or her). Instead, I found a lot of dedicated individuals who put the thrill of the fight above all else. They dedicated their lives for Eagle, something I felt I couldn’t do for Citigroup (but that’s a whole other blog entry).

Now, if I had to choose a character that stood out most, it wouldn’t be Carl Alsing. Or would it? Although he tried to fly under the radar in his career, he plays an important role in “Soul of a New Machine”. Carl was a humble individual who didn’t get the credit he probably should have deserved, largely because he’d rather lay in the shadows of Tom West. His intelligence is evident, but his motivation is sometimes questionable. It is clearly identified during his early work on the Eclipse where his procastination didn’t go over well with the rest of the team. In the end, his work was intelligent but messy. Maybe more important than his intellect, was his sincere interest in his team of microcoders (which by that point were doing most of the coding). He worried that they were spending too much time focusing on the task at hand that they would burn out. To take them away from this, he forced them to play games. The games seemed to me like training exercises aimed at sharpening their minds while they broke from their daily chores. If, one day, I return to the tech business, I hope that as a manager I am able to motivate team members in this fashion.

a blog entry by Brian Thoms