Biological metaphors comparing computers to human brains provided a dominant metaphor on film and television of the pre-microprocessor era. Specifically, the characterization of mainframe computers as "mechanical," "electronic" or "super-human" brains invites a particularly limiting model for understanding the relation between humans and computational devices of this era. With the vast majority of the population still having only the vaguest idea of how computers worked and what they were capable of, the Electronic Brain represented the legacy of robots–a more obviously anthropomorphic conceit–in the cinematic imaginary.

Although lacking the humanoid physical attributes and mobility of the robots that appeared in film and TV science fiction, mainframe computers that were modeled after the brain had no trouble communicating with humans using natural (if sometimes stilted, terse or monotone) language. As with their robotic predecessors, these computers frequently deployed technologies of voice recognition and synthesis; at other times the human interface was abstracted through keyboard or push-button interfaces that nonetheless did not require translation into machine-readable code. These "brains" were capable of exercising complex reasoning, solving impossibly difficult tasks with minimal input, and were frequently imbued with idiosyncrasies of character that inclined them to interact with humans with an attitude of imperiousness, condescension or sarcasm. Like nearly all cinematic and televisual mainframes of this era, these machines are endowed with names -- usually acronyms -- but only occasionally made reminiscent of real-world first generation mainframes such as the ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer) or UNIVAC (Universal Automatic Computer).

In the cultural imaginary of the 1960s and 1970s, computation was most frequently deployed in pursuit of human vices related to gambling, greed, seduction and crime. Computers cannot be said to have caused these narrative tendencies, but the ease with which they were integrated into a genuinely eclectic range of genres offers a glimpse of the mutability of computation in the cultural imaginary of this era, suggesting a relationship of naive fascination with computation that far surpassed its real-world applications. In an age when computers existed almost exclusively within the domain of computation-intensive military, scientific and governmental agencies, these cinematic and televisual speculations may be read as evidence of the disconnect between real-world computer technology and its role in the cultural imaginary. Computers, in other words, did not open new avenues of possibility so much as amplify and intensify already existing tropes and tendencies of film and television. With few exceptions, computers were introduced into the storylines of films and TV shows in order to create narrative disruptions or threats to the existing social order, the resolution of which was tied to familiar reassertions of the primacy of human values.

In these narratives, computers are readily manipulated or repurposed from their original programming through the feeding of misinformation or application to a new realm of computation. For example, a submarine-based computer used to calculate missile trajectories is hijacked to predict the outcomes of a roulette wheel with improbable accuracy in The Honeymoon Machine (1961); a data processing computer is pressed into service by petty criminals hoping to locate the fountain of youth in The Fat Spy (1966); and a room-sized UNIVAC computer is used to track gambling debts in Who's Got the Action (1962). Should such imaginings be disregarded as trivial artifacts of popular culture or taken seriously as historiographical evidence of the cultural processing of an emergent technology? It is important to remember that computers of this era were part of a broad spectrum of technologies developed during World War II that included the development of the atomic bomb, as well as wartime technologies related to jet propulsion, radar, sonar and long-range radio communications. What separated computing from these other wartime technologies was the potential for anthropomorphism in cinematic and televisual depictions of computers' capacity for thought and agency.

Perhaps the most explicit example of biological metaphors in the early mainframe era is Richard Thorpe's The Honeymoon Machine (1961). In this MGM romantic comedy starring Steve McQueen (Lt. Ferguson) and James Hutton (Dr. Eldridge), the electronic brain, known by the anthropocentric acronym MACS, pronounced "Max" (Magnetic Analyzer Computer Synchrotron) is introduced to three United States senators on board a naval warship, an unusually plausible location for the narrative to be set. The computer scientist Eldridge (Hutton) describes MACS as an "electronic brain," using vivid biological metaphors, referring to its "cortex," "intelligence," "electronic nerves," "grey matter," and "powers of concentration." When asked directly whether the computer is able to "think," Hutton offers a qualified no, countering that "Max" has a "superhuman memory" and "super-analytical mind," which are implicitly distinct from the human capacity for thought.

While mainframe computers in the cinematic imaginary of the 1950s to 1970s focused on the potentials for competition with human intelligence, the era of the personal computer brought with it a reconception of the relationship between humans and computers in terms of extension and augmentation. It may no longer be fashionable to ask whether computers are as smart as humans, but we still sometimes worry that the growing ubiquity of computers and networks in daily life of the twenty-first century are somehow making us dumber.

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