No Curfew Tonight
Dec. 4th, 2010 05:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stickmakerAlthough _Desk Set_ is dated in some ways, it is prescient in others. Spencer Tracy is a computer expert overseeing the installation of two new computers at a national broadcasting network headquarters. One is in payroll, the other in reference. Katherine Hepburn is the head of the reference library, where the employees answer questions phoned in.
Though there are fears that the computer is intended to replace them, it is actually there to help them. After watching them work, Tracy's character keeps emphasizing the fact that the machine cannot do their job. This is demonstrated when the computer's operator tries to answer the question of whether the King of the Watusis drives a car, and the machine spits out a movie review of "King Solomon's Mines," which his tribe aided in the filming of. (How many Google users today empathize?)
The breaking point for the computer comes when someone asks a question about Corfu (an island off the coast of Albania near the mouth of the Adriatic) but the operator misspells the name (again, anticipating modern digital search problems) and the computer starts printing out the book-length poem "Curfew Must Not Ring Tonight!" The question is answered by one of the staff, while the computer keeps printing. Hepburn begins a dramatic reading of the poem as it prints, continuing when she answers the phone for another query.
Though there are fears that the computer is intended to replace them, it is actually there to help them. After watching them work, Tracy's character keeps emphasizing the fact that the machine cannot do their job. This is demonstrated when the computer's operator tries to answer the question of whether the King of the Watusis drives a car, and the machine spits out a movie review of "King Solomon's Mines," which his tribe aided in the filming of. (How many Google users today empathize?)
The breaking point for the computer comes when someone asks a question about Corfu (an island off the coast of Albania near the mouth of the Adriatic) but the operator misspells the name (again, anticipating modern digital search problems) and the computer starts printing out the book-length poem "Curfew Must Not Ring Tonight!" The question is answered by one of the staff, while the computer keeps printing. Hepburn begins a dramatic reading of the poem as it prints, continuing when she answers the phone for another query.
