Information Technology Reference
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the situation, “It simply does not seem very ominous when they threaten
to put a mechanical brain in a broadcasting company's reference library,
over which the effi cient Miss Hepburn has sway. . . . The prospect of
automation is plainly no menace to Kate.”
6
But if the computer held no dangers for Hepburn, it did for many of
the real-life offi ce workers watching the fi lm. Like Watson and her librar-
ians, most would have greeted the arrival of a computer-toting effi ciency
expert with fear and trepidation. Although Tracy imbued the character
of Sumner with his trademark gruff-but-likable persona, such experts
were generally seen as the harbingers of reorganization, mechanization,
and what the economist Thorstein Veblen described as the “degradation
of labor.”
7
And as Thomas Haigh has suggested, it was no coincidence
that Sumner was both an effi ciency expert and a computer designer;
many of the “systems men” of the early electronic computer era were
effi ciency experts turned computer consultants. In any case, the specter
of computer-driven unemployment looms large over
Desk Set
, if only as
the source of initial confl ict between Sumner and Watson. But even the
most casual viewers of
Desk Set
might have suspected that absent the
feisty Hepburn, the librarians at the Federal Broadcasting Network might
not have gotten off so easily. Although the fi lm alluded to a second
EMERAC that had been installed in the payroll department, no mention
was made of the payroll workers having a Watson of their own. Even if
the skilled reference librarians and accountants were immune from com-
puterization, though, what about other, less specialized workers? Did
anyone really expect the two Emmies to remain confi ned to the library
and payroll departments? It seemed inevitable that at least some Federal
Broadcasting Network employees would be reduced to the status of mere
machine operators, or perhaps replaced altogether.
Insofar as the
Desk Set
has been interpreted critically, it is in the
context of these larger concerns about the replacement of human beings
with computers. The struggle of human versus machine (or more precise,
woman versus machine) depicted in the fi lm is often seen as a metaphor
for worker resistance to computerization. Although the possibility that
computers might supersede humans was much discussed in the popular
press during the 1950s and early 1960s, with the exception of a small
number of occupational categories the adoption of computer technology
generally
did not
involve large-scale worker displacement. For the most
part, what resistance to corporate computerization efforts did emerge
came not from ordinary workers but rather from their managers. It was
these managers who frequently saw their work most directly affected by
