I just watched an interesting scene in Mad Men, season 6, episode 7, “The Monolith.” Don has returned to the office after a leave, and finds that more than just the relationships around him have changed. More notably, Sterling Cooper & Partners has decided to buy a computer, and the office is undergoing construction and renovation as they ready the space for the new machine. Don and Lloyd, the IBM project manager have a conversation:

Lloyd: That’s why I supervise the installations. There’s always some kind of trouble.

Don: Don’t worry that goes back years.

Lloyd: Well I go into businesses everyday and it’s been my experience these machines can be a metaphor for whatever’s on people’s minds.

Don: Because they’re afraid of computers?

Lloyd: Yes. This machine is frightening people but it’s made by people.

Don: And people aren’t frightening?

Lloyd: It’s not that. It’s more of a cosmic disturbance. This machine is intimidating becaucse it contains infinite quantities of information and that’s threatening. Because human existence is finite. But isn’t it god-like that we’ve mastered the infinite? The IBM 360 can count more stars in a day than we can in a lifetime.

Don: But what man lying on his back counting stars would have thought about a number?

Lloyd: He probably thought about going to the moon.

The new computer takes up half the room, so the SC&P copywriters have to move offices. Technology is literally displacing people–namely the creative department–with machine. Assuming that the Mad Men writers wrote a conversation that very likely could have happened in 1964, it’s notable to me how our fears today are similar (in proportion to the advances in technology we are facing). The overall wariness of machine as a single source of job elimination is strikingly similar to how it is now.

We’re deep into the discussion of computers displacing human labor, but human creativity has yet to be replaced, and won’t be for a long time yet. Machines have gotten better at counting stars, but they still can’t imagine for themselves a mission to the moon.