Home > Work > The Soul of a New Machine
1 " It became apparent that communications and computing served each other so intimately that they might actually become the same thing; "
― Tracy Kidder , The Soul of a New Machine
2 " In the early days, computers inspired widespread awe and the popular press dubbed them giant brains. In fact, the computer’s power resembled that of a bulldozer; it did not harness subtlety, though subtlety went into its design. "
3 " When you burn out, you lose enthusiasm. I always loved computers. All of a sudden I just didn’t care. It was, all of a sudden, a job. "
4 " One winter night, at his home, while he was stirring up the logs in his fireplace, he muttered, “Computers are irrelevant.” Building "
5 " Too much protocol. "
6 " As they say, the first step in fixing something is getting it to break. "
7 " Everything is quantified,” he said. “Whether it’s the technology or the way people use it, it has an insidious ability to reduce things to less than human dimensions. "
8 " No one keeps track of the hours we work,” said Ken Holberger. He grinned. “That’s not altruism on Data General’s part. If anybody kept track, they’d have to pay us a hell of a lot more than they do.” Yet it is a fact, not entirely lost on management consultants, that some people would rather work twelve hours a day of their own choosing than eight that are prescribed. Provided, of course, that the work is interesting. That was the main thing. "
9 " On the contrary, a company was more likely to asphyxiate on its own success. "
10 " In the modern computer, software has developed in such a way as to fill this role of go-between. On one end you have the so-called end user who wants to be able to order up a piece of long division, say, simply by supplying two numbers to the machine and ordering it to divide them. At the other end stands the actual computer, which for all its complexity is something of a brute. It can perform only several hundred basic operations, and long division may not be one of them. The machine may have to be instructed to perform a sequence of several of its basic operations in order to accomplish a piece of long division. Software—a series of what are known as programs—translates the end user’s wish into specific, functional commands for the machine. "
11 " In the sixties there was proposed a “National Data Bank,” which would, theoretically, improve the government’s efficiency by allowing agencies to share information. The fact that such a system could be abused did not mean it would be, proponents said; it could be constructed in such a way as to guarantee benign use. Nonsense, said opponents, who managed to block the proposal; no matter what the intent or the safeguards, the existence of such a system would inevitably lead toward the creation of a police state. "
12 " I think I wanted to see how complicated things happen,” West said years later. “There’s some notion of control, it seems to me, that you can derive in a world full of confusion if you at least understand how things get put together. Even if you can’t under stand every little part, how infernal machines get put together. "
13 " In many cases, a small and daily growing computer company did not fall on hard times because people suddenly stopped wanting to buy its products. On the contrary, a company was more likely to asphyxiate on its own success. "
14 " It is not a large exaggeration to say that everything else in a computer exists in order to bring information swiftly to the ALU for manipulation; and for the ALU, adding is the mechanical equivalent of breathing. But "
15 " At the level of the microcode, physical and abstract meet. The "
16 " Often, they said, it is the most talented engineers who have the hardest time learning when to stop striving for perfection. West "
17 " Several talked about their “flexible hours.” “No one keeps track of the hours we work,” said Ken Holberger. He grinned. “That’s not altruism on Data General’s part. If anybody kept track, they’d have to pay us a hell of a lot more than they do.” Yet it is a fact, not entirely lost on management consultants, that some people would rather work twelve hours a day of their own choosing than eight that are prescribed. Provided, of course, that the work is interesting. "
18 " In a book called Computer Power and Human Reason, a professor of computer science at MIT named Joseph Weizenbaum writes of a malady he calls “the compulsion to program.” He describes the afflicted as “bright young men of disheveled appearance, often with sunken, glowing eyes,” who play out “megalomaniacal fantasies of omnipotence” at computer consoles; they sit at their machines, he writes, “their arms tensed and waiting to fire their fingers, already poised to strike, at the buttons and keys on which their attention seems to be as riveted as a gambler’s on the rolling dice. "
19 " By signing up for the project you agreed to do whatever was necessary for success. "
20 " Rasala had named the two new prototypes Tartis and Gallifrey, after the home planet and time machine of Dr. Who, the protagonist of a science fiction show on public TV. "
