As its title suggests, The Soul of a New Machine is fundamentally concerned with the human dimension of the development of groundbreaking technology.
From hypercaffeinated late nights to ferocious competition with the Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC), Kidder’s 1981 classic fuses a highly literary narrative with relevant scientific history.
The real story reads like high drama: Doe-eyed but driven college graduates hunker down with senior developers in North Carolina to invent and perfect a novel technology to outcompete an ambitious tech rival.
The result dramatically altered the 32-bit minicomputer market and represented a milestone in the path toward the digital revolution of the 1990s and early 2000s.
Although the world Kidder so vividly reconstructs is far removed from our own technologically sophisticated era, it nevertheless elicits parallels to the unpredictable and haphazard development of Artificial Intelligence and the unforeseen consequences it portends.
This first edition from Little Brown and Company is significant in its own right, reifying in paper and plastic a thrilling story that modern readers encounter every time they open their computers.Â
