Movie of the Month: Desk Set (dir. Walter Lang, 1957)

Image source: IMDB NOTE: There are mild, nondescript spoilers here. For such a lightweight comedy, Desk Set seems oddly prescient today. The film depicts the desperation of a group of research librarians at a TV studio when computerization is brought into the workplace. The head librarian Bunny (Katharine Hepburn) goes head to head with computer engineer Richard (Spencer Tracy), who wants to install a massive computer in the research center. Nicknamed EMERAC (short for Electromagnetic Memory and Research Arithmetical Calculator), the computer comes off like an old-school ChatGPT, spitting out answers to inquires on a giant ream of paper. The librarians fear they will be displaced by the technology, all the while Bunny and Richard find their professional conflict complicated by budding romance. I wonder how seriously audiences took fears of automation in 1957. Computers were not yet the daily presence they are today. With so many as big and unwieldy as EMERAC, I have to wonder if AI…

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