Costello Department, Miss Reference Speaking

If you’re the sort of person who, like me, recently finished Brian Merchant’s Blood in the Machine, or even Joanne McNeil’s Wrong Way, or perhaps Brit Marling and Zal Batmanglij’s A Murder at the End of the World, and are looking for a movie to watch at Christmas, I’d point you in the direction of 1957’s Desk Set.

Based on the play of the same name (here’s a comparison), the romantic comedy starring Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy is set during the holidays and against the backdrop of a story about labor and artificial intelligence, as the reference librarians of the Federal Broadcasting Company worry that they are about to be wholly replaced by an “electronic brain” named EMMARAC.

In the end, the company line is that the machine is meant to free up the reference librarians to do less scutwork and focus on fresh research, as a coming merger is positioned as bring more jobs, not fewer. Sixty-six years of hindsight makes this difficult to take seriously today, especially if you’re fresh off the McNeil or the Marling wherein the monied technology interests talk a good, humanistic game that never quite entirely feels sincere.

One thing EMMARAC has going for it in the context of labor relations in a Luddite tradition: a ridiculously prominent, red “key” that’s easy to dislodge if you’re looking to grind to a halt the machinery of its knowledge loom.