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Fred Moody
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I Sing the Body Electronic: A Year With Microsoft on the Multimedia Frontier Paperback – January 1, 1996

by Fred Moody (Author)
4.3 out of 5 stars 16 ratings
Fred Moody spent a year shadowing a team of Microsoft developers working on a children's compact disc to be called Explorapedia. What he discovered was that, when the novelty and excitement surrounding the newest generation of software is stripped away, one finds a world not of high-tech efficiency but of simple human muddling.
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  1. Print length
    320 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Penguin Group USA
  4. Publication date
    January 1, 1996
  5. Dimensions
    5.25 x 0.75 x 7.75 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    0140176551
  7. ISBN-13
    978-0140176551
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Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Penguin Group USA
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ January 1, 1996
  • Edition ‏ : ‎ 0
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 320 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0140176551
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0140176551
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 8 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.25 x 0.75 x 7.75 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.3 out of 5 stars 16 ratings

About the author

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Fred Moody

Fred Moody

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Fred Moody was born and raised in the Pacific Northwest, save for four years spent in California, at Catholic seminaries, during the 1960s, and six years spent working with suppressed Russian writers in Ann Arbor, Michigan, in the 1970s. He has written extensively about the life and mind of the Northwesterner, about software and other technology startups, and about the troubled psychology of Catholicism. His memoir, "Unspeakable Joy," studies the root causes of the Catholic Church's sexual abuse scandal. His most recent memoir, available in the Kindle Vella Store, is “Barfly on the Wall”—a chronicle of his three-year stint, after retirement, as a Seattle bartender.

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Top reviews from the United States

  • huechroma@aol.com
    5.0 out of 5 stars This book captures the essence of design organizations.
    Reviewed in the United States on September 12, 1998
    It is remarkable that Fred Moody was able to gain the confidence of Microsoft's Explorapedia design and develpment team to the extent that he could chronical their process with all its warts. For anyone who has not had experience with the design and development process this book provides insignts that should both amuse and inform. For those who have been involved with the design and development process but have not taken the time to refelect on their own activities, this book may prompt them to ask the question, "What are we doing to ourselves and why do we do it?"
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  • James
    4.0 out of 5 stars A wibbly wobbly thing
    Reviewed in the United States on December 4, 2010
    This book from 1993 to 1995 is a depressing view of the inside of a multimedia project run by young, Generation X Microsofters who sincerely believed in the company vision. Although, with a company that large, that diverse and that disorganised, I think the vision couldn't be seen for the re-organisations.

    The book follows a group of 20 somethings from the initial ideas of the multimedia project (called Sendak until it's official name of Explorapedia was chosen,) through to almost the delivery stage. And there are two over-riding themes that contribute to the almost failure of the project: unclear lines of control, and indecisiveness.

    Let's look at these in turn.

    Production Manager, Project Manager, Art Director, Lead Programmer and Chief Coffee Maker. (Okay, I make that last one up.) Throughout the multimedia project detailed in this book, the roles people undertook always seemed to be fluid in their meaning and responsibilities. One reason for this was that, as Microsoft was growing so fast, internal people were often promoted over external hires and so some quite young staff ended up in fairly senior positions. People who once worked as equals, were now supervisor and the supervised. Which might not be a bad thing, but without the proper training, could be quite catastrophic in the personal and professional relationships of all those involved. Here, this was experienced as the previous Art Director on another project was now the Producer (or the other way around, or the Production Manager - I should have taken notes while reading it,) and it wasn't always clear who had what responsibility. So, one person was sometimes butting in and doing the other's work, and as the project went on, there would be re-organisation after re-organisation which lead to mass confusion about who exactly the decision makers were.

    We trained hard, but it seemed that every time we were beginning
    to form up into teams, we would be reorganised. I was to learn later
    in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganising; and
    a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress
    while producing confusion, and demoralisation.
    -- Petronius Arbiter, 210 B.C.

    It just seemed to be the Microsoft Way.

    The other problem with this project was the scope of what was being produced. The clearest voice of reason in all of this was the cranky programmer, who knew quite well when things had to be decided, and not changed in order to have the code finished and tested to meet the ship date. The programmer, as one of the final steps in the design and development process, always appeared to be the one that had slipped and missed their milestones, rather than the designers who had missed their deadlines at the beginning of the project because of an inability to make a decision, and stick to it.

    And here's where the traditional Project Management Methodology and also Agile Project Management Methodology can fail: once a decision has been made, even though it's software, it costs a lot to go back and re-engineer something. This project almost failed because the scope was a wibbly-wobbly thing that the team never really got a hold on, wrestled to the ground and took control of. As such, late in the design and early development stages, fundamental changes were introduced that changed the game (literally.)

    So, what can be learned from this? Make sure that the client (even an internal client) knows that a change in scope means changes in time and cost. It's an immutable law of Project Management, and I know we all know it, but sometimes we need to state the obvious. Also, experience pays off - in software development most people are in their 20s, and now that I'm not any more, I can look back and see how inexperienced I used to be, and how much there really is to learn about process management.

    The project shipped, many people were burnt out, angry, demoralised and just plain over it. But in the end, as we all know, we just get back up again and walk into the maelstrom for one more go, because we believe this time it will be better - it just has to be,

    Finally, one criticism of the book: I kept getting lost with regards to who was who. Sometimes the author would use a person's given name, and then later in the book, their family name, and then back again. So, as people changed positions, I didn't know who the Project Manager was from the Producer to the Production Manager. It's a small quibble, and really in the end it doesn't distract from the book.
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  • Neurasthenic
    3.0 out of 5 stars A window into a flash in computer history
    Reviewed in the United States on May 9, 2019
    Verified Purchase
    This is the story of the development of a multimedia children’s encyclopedia at Microsoft. It’s interesting in part because multimedia as a software category seemed so important for a few years, but went away so utterly by the turn of the millennium. Profiles of technology development can be fascinating windows into how problems get solved and how people of differing skills can collaborate, or be managed into cooperating towards a common goal, and how the future gets shaped. But this book? Fred Moody has obvious contempt for all the Gen-X Microsoft employees he writes about. He mocks their lack of organization, their neuroses, their office habits. He clearly thinks they would do better with somebody a little bit older in charge, somebody more like Fred Moody himself.

    For most people, unless they have a tie to Microsoft or the individuals discussed in this book, stick with Tracy Kidder’s “The Soul of a New Machine”.
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  • grappone@acsu.buffalo.edu
    5.0 out of 5 stars Could there be order in chaos?
    Reviewed in the United States on April 10, 1998
    "I Sing the Body Electronic" is a success story. Fred Moody entertainingly describes the lifecycle of a product created by Microsoft. The mystifying part is how the success described in the story came to be. Moody vividly explains the socio-political inner workings of Microsoft by tailing a development team from the start of a product until its eventual completion. The team members come to life on the page, and the observations made by Moody add an intellectual quality to what would otherwise be a soap opera.
    The book is gripping until the very end. The dialogue and writing are easily read, and well chosen. The chronological layout of the book, while necessary, is unfettering. All together the book is well written. Fred Moody ends the book with a provocative suggestion as to how a doomed project became a success. I wont spoil it by telling you what it is, but trust me its insightful.
    I can't help but believe that Bill Gates traded in his families only possessions for some magic beans. Well it has certainly paid off for him, and Mr. Moody as well.
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Top reviews from other countries

  • Thorarinn Leifsson
    4.0 out of 5 stars Good portrait of early multimedia struggles
    Reviewed in Germany on April 4, 2015
    Verified Purchase
    Pretty good description of the atmosphere of multimedia projects in the early years. Having worked myself in big web desing sweatshops around the turn of the century this book served me like a trip down memory lane.
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