Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ

It's a beautiful day in the Hub O'the Universe, so I took the long way in to work today and biked down Memorial Drive. ÌýWhich brought me near to the Carter's Ink building on First Street in Cambridge, where I worked 23 years ago. Ìý(Good ÌýGod, I'm old!)

I worked at a company called Thinking Machines Corporation, and they were a supercomputer manufacturer. ÌýFounded by some MIT graduates, including famed , Thinking Machines made massively parallel supercomputers. ÌýAt the time, they acted (at least to me) like they were the first ones to do this, but shows that's not true, and that Thinking Machines doesn't even rate a mention in the history of parallel processing.

I worked with what amounted to an of computer people doing stuff I didn't understand. ÌýAnd a bunch of young, bitter recent college grads doing secretarial or (in my case) mail-sorting jobs that neither used our skills nor paid enough for us to meet our student loan obligations comfortably. ÌýThanks, Bush The Elder recession!

Still, I was happy to work there--I was lucky to have a job, and there were a lot of great benefits. ÌýSuch as delicious Ìýgourmet lunches cooked by the executive chef and available for 3 bucks, which was ridiculously cheap even in 1991.Ìý

Also, it was a beautiful environment--the place took beauty very seriously, and when it expanded to the building behind the Carter's Ink building, the space was remodeled to make it a really lovely environment, with great views of Boston and the Charles River.Ìý

I also got Ìýintroduced to the nascent internet, spending hours reading usenet posts (I told you I was old) when I didn't have enough work to do.

Which got to be more and more often as the months went on there. ÌýMore on that later.

I learned a great deal in my time at Thinking Machines Corporation.

One was to always be nice to the lowest-level people in the company. Because I was one, and I still remember who treated me like a human being (most people) and who didn't. Also, all of us on the bottom rungs of the latter in this organization talked to each other. And we all knew all the secrets. Like who was on that secret email list where people made fun of those of us not on the list, or the fact that the vice president got picked up from his home in a far western suburb every morning and driven in to work by the company van driver.

Another was that it's pretty easy for Ìýan organization to get lost by believing its own hype. ÌýWhen I worked there, it was the most innovative, awesome company on the planet, building a machine that would be proud of us. ÌýScience superstar Richard Feynman wore a Thinking Machines t-shirt on the cover of one of his books! ÌýThinking Machines spent extravagantly on the aforementioned remodel (there was the legend of the $1200 door), on flowers ($1k per month, according to gossip), and on hiring Vietnam Memorial designer Maya Lin to design the new model of the computer (in a real demonstration of her versatility, she came up with a computer design that resembled a black granite wall). (And yes, she was one of Ìýthe people who didn't treat me like a human being.)Ìý

And it was all fine because (again, according to internal legend), DARPA money had placed Thinking Machines computers in a bunch of universities and national labs. ÌýAnd the good times would roll forever.

I spent part of my day working in customer support and learned this interesting fact about Thinking Machines supercomputers: they broke down all the freaking time. ÌýThe Vietnam Wall-with red LEDs that was the CM-5 was rolled out before the CM-2 machines already deployed were working reliably. Ìý(I think this is correct--if you worked there and Ìýknow this to be wrong, let me know and I will correct this.) Ìý

The CM-5 was featured in Jurassic Park, and for some reason the company deployed two engineers to the set to assemble an empty cabinet that looked like a supercomputer. Ìý

Unfortunately, most of the people in the audience for that summer blockbuster weren't in the market for a ten million dollar supercomputer. ÌýAnd most of the people involved in purchasing a ten million dollar supercomputer are not that impressed with its proximity to Jeff Goldblum. Ìý

And also, unfortunately, according to legend, once the DARPA money wasn't subsidizing the purchase of Thinking Machines supercomputers, people had very little interest in purchasing expensive machines that broke down all the time. Ìý

The writing was on the wall when I left to go to graduate school in 1992. Thinking Machines went bankrupt in 1994. My friend who worked in HR said, "I was the last person I laid off." ÌýShe did not mention whether she turned out the lights when she left.

Ìý

Ìý

Ìý