Talk to The Soul of a New Machine like its author wrote you back.
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What it argues
Tracy Kidder's account of the engineers at Data General Corporation who designed a new minicomputer under enormous competitive pressure in the late 1970s won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award in 1982 and effectively invented the genre of technology-company narrative journalism. Published in 1981, it remains the clearest account of what it actually feels like to make something new under deadline — and of what organizations do to, and with, people who care intensely about their work.
The book follows Tom West, a veteran Data General engineer, and the two teams he assembled — the Hardy Boys (experienced engineers) and the Microkids (recent college graduates) — who built the Eclipse MV/8000, a 32-bit minicomputer that Data General needed to compete with Digital Equipment Corporation's VAX. The project was officially invisible within Data General — a skunkworks operating below the company's official radar — which meant that the team had no formal resources and depended entirely on West's ability to protect them from organizational interference while also covertly obtaining what they needed.
What it gets right
- 1.
Technical complexity can be made narratively compelling if the human stakes are made clear. Kidder's achievement was to find the human drama inside what looked like a purely technical project.
- 2.
Organizational dynamics can make or break a technical project. West's ability to protect his team from Data General's bureaucracy was as important as any engineering decision.
- 3.
The engineers signed on for reasons that weren't primarily financial. Pride, the desire to prove themselves, the satisfaction of solving hard problems — these were the real currencies.
What it covers
Who wrote it
Tracy Kidder was born in New York City in 1945 and studied at Harvard and the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop. The Soul of a New Machine, published in 1981 after two years of immersive reporting at Data General, won both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, establishing the template for literary technology journalism. He has subsequently written books about home construction, elementary school teaching, elderly care, and global medicine. His book about Paul Farmer, Mountains Beyond Mountains, is widely considered his other major work. He teaches writing at various institutions and continues to report and publish.
