Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
6
The Cosa Nostra of the Data Processing
Industry
We are at once the most unmanageable and the most poorly managed specialism
in our society. Actors and artists pale by comparison. Only pure mathematicians
are as cantankerous, and it's a calamity that so many of them get recruited by
simplistic personnel men.
—Herbert Grosch, “Programmers: The Industry's Cosa Nostra,” 1966
Unsettling the Desk Set
The 1957 fi lm
Desk Set
is best known to movie buffs as a lightweight
but enjoyable romantic comedy, the eighth of nine pictures in which
Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn acted together, and the fi rst to be
fi lmed in color. The fi lm is generally considered frivolous yet enjoyable,
not one of the famous pair's best, though still popular and durable. The
plot is fairly straightforward: Tracy, as Richard Sumner, is an effi ciency
expert charged with introducing computer technology into the reference
library at the fi ctional Federal Broadcasting Network. There he encoun-
ters Bunny Watson, the Hepburn character, and her spirited troop of
female reference librarians. Watson and her fellow librarians, who spend
their days researching the answers to such profound questions as “What
kind of car does the king of the Watusis drive?” and “How much damage
is caused annually to American forests by the spruce budworm?” imme-
diately suspect Sumner of trying to put them all out of a job. After the
usual course of conventional romantic comedy fare—mutual mistrust,
false assumptions, sublimated sexual tension, and humorous misunder-
standings—Watson comes to see Sumner as he truly is: a stand-up guy
who was only seeking to make her work as a librarian easier and more
enjoyable.
What is less widely remembered about
Desk Set
is that it was spon-
sored in part by the IBM Corporation. The fi lm opens with a wide-angle
