Podcast Summary

New Books Network: Episode 157 - Mangrum's Comical Computation

Release Date: October 2, 2025
Host: John Plotz
Guest: Ben Mangram, MIT Professor of Literature
Book Discussed: The Comedy of Computation, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Obsolescence (Stanford University Press, 2025)

Overview

This episode features a rich and witty discussion with literary scholar Ben Mangram about his new book, The Comedy of Computation, examining how comedy and satire have shaped the cultural understanding of computers—from early anxieties about replacing human knowledge work, to the ways humor and technology intertwine in American cultural history. The conversation merges deep critical theory with lively pop-culture references, from Desk Set to The Hitchhiker's Guide, and addresses why laughter often mediates our relationship with new technologies.

Main Discussion & Key Insights

1. Origins & Themes of The Comedy of Computation

• Cultural History Approach:
  Mangram explains that much previous scholarship focused on technical or business histories of computing, but his book explores the largely overlooked influence of comedy in shaping public attitudes toward computers.
  • “The book is a cultural history of the computer...what I found was that apparently the first appearance of a computer on Broadway was in this romantic comedy...the computer's appearance was in a genre at odds with our anxieties about computing.” (03:59–05:00)
• Desk Set as Inspiration:
  The surprising role of the computer within a Broadway romantic comedy (William Marchant’s Desk Set) provided the launching point for his study.

2. Comedy as Coping Mechanism for Technological Anxiety

• Knowledge Work & Obsolescence:
  The transition from manual labor being replaced by robots to knowledge work being threatened by computers is a persistent narrative:
  • “Knowledge workers have been anxious about the way their expertise and professional judgment...is threatened by computation.” (06:55)
• Comedy's Double Role:
  Comedy not only reassures and manages societal anxiety (“laughter is the best medicine”), but also serves as critique, sometimes highlighting the absurbities and failings of technology.

3. Definitions & Complexities of Comedy in Computing

• Blurring Genre Boundaries:
  Mangram takes a pragmatic approach to comedy, encompassing both “bleak satire and an upbeat...romantic comedy” if they function similarly (09:30).
  • “I don’t always distinguish between bleak satire and an upbeat happy ending...if there are similarities in function.” (09:30)
• Coupling Human and Machine:
  The trope of “coupling”—traditionally a heteronormative narrative—is queered in computer comedies, where the computer is both threat and, by the end, absorbed into the couple, challenging what happy endings mean.
  • “The computer often occupies this really queer role...it presents itself initially as a challenge to a couple’s union...But what happens at the end is that the computer becomes assimilated.” (11:57)

4. The Cyborg, Black Mirror, and Comic Science Fiction

• Cyborg Manifesto & Affordances:
  John Plotz raises Donna Haraway's cyborg theory, linking it to how technology and personhood co-evolve, even as Mangram notes comedy might not be the primary genre for these explorations (16:46).
• Genealogy of Sci-Fi Comedy:
  The episode ties in Twilight Zone, Black Mirror, Stanislaw Lem’s Siberiad, Star Trek, Doctor Who, and Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, drawing out themes like the Earth as a computer and the erasure of the human/machine binary.

5. Early American Computation & Racial Discourse

• Prehistory in American Dime Novels:
  Mangram discusses early representations of robots in stories like The Steam Man of the Prairies, connecting their comic aspects to racialized caricatures drawn from minstrelry (25:18).
  • “These early robots often become comic through their proximity to racial discourse...the minstrel stage is a kind of analog that really feeds into early depictions of this use object, the robot.” (25:18)

6. Comedy’s Critical & Habituating Functions

• Irony and Critique:
  Comedy is “trans-ideological”; it both exposes and normalizes the social world mediated by computation.
  • “Those intersections often set up types of critique...there's this gap between...big claims, you know, utopian claims that tech companies...make about their products and the actual realities.” (27:40)
  • Yet, Mangram also notes the anesthetizing, habit-forming side of corporate tech humor.

7. Is There a "New New" with AI?

• Cultural Reactions to Novelty:
  The pattern of anxiety and comedic adaptation recurs as technology advances—from 1950s computers to 2020s AI—yet with faster cycles and shorter cultural memory.
  • “Some of the phenomena...are bubbling up in the computer’s cultural history, that bubble pops...But...there are kinds of...ideas that are abiding, or really constant.” (34:15)

8. Science Fictionalization of Everyday Life & Obsolescence

• Language Struggles to Catch Up:
  Our vocabularies continually lag behind rapid technological change, often needing science fiction (and comedy) to imagine and articulate our present.
  • “There’s this kind of, like, striving or groping after language for making intelligible this experience…” (36:35)
• Obsolescence as Experience:
  Modernity and computation both accelerate not just technological, but phenomenological obsolescence—the sense that our categories for living become outdated quickly (38:13).

9. Nature, Authenticity, & Tech

• Natural Metaphors in Tech:
  Tech companies often appropriate “natural” imagery to address authenticity anxieties (40:25).
  • “A lot of computing, a lot of big tech corporations like Apple often sort of describes its operating system as...a garden.” (40:25)

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “Comedy has provided a kind of toolbox for managing those anxieties or responding to those anxieties about the obsolescence of the knowledge worker.” —Ben Mangram (06:55)
• “The computer becomes assimilated within the couple...what seems at first glance to be a heteronormative or traditional plot structure is actually much more complicated.” —Ben Mangram (11:57)
• “The Steam man of the Prairies not only has sort of blackened skin, but also kind of exaggerated minstrel figures, facial figures...” —Ben Mangram (25:18)
• “There are also other ways in which, you know, jokes are really central to making corporate interests palatable.” —Ben Mangram (29:39)
• “Computing technology has created this kind of phenomenological obsolescence as a structure of experience...the ways we make sense of our everyday life become obsolete increasingly faster.” —Ben Mangram (38:13)
• “Natural imagery, sort of the language of the natural is a central kind of term for a lot of computing...one reason for this has to do with this real concern with addressing this angst about authenticity...” —Ben Mangram (40:25)

Recommended & Discussed Books

By Ben Mangram:

• The Comedy of Computation, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Obsolescence (Stanford UP, 2025)

Recalled during the ‘Recallable Books’ Segment:

• Elif Batuman, The Idiot (42:09) – “A fantastic comic novel...a retrospective about encountering email in college for the first time.”
• Sally Rooney, Conversations with Friends (44:20) – “Email and texting is the new normative medium of exchange...a litmus test for how personhood gets reconstituted.”
• Richard Powers, Plowing the Dark – On immersive 3D virtual worlds.
• Stanislaw Lem, The Siberiad – Humans posing as computers in a recursive comic narrative.
• Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy – “The premise is that the Earth itself is a computer.”
• Karel Čapek, R.U.R.; Leo Marx, The Machine in the Garden; Dave Eggers, The Circle / The Every
• Gary Larson, The Far Side – Technology jokes as daily comic critique.

Key Timestamps

• [03:59] Ben Mangram describes his book’s premise and inspiration.
• [06:55] Discussion of knowledge work, class, and the threat of obsolescence.
• [09:30/11:57] Explaining the complexity of comedy and the queering of human/machine coupling.
• [16:46] John Plotz brings Donna Haraway’s cyborg arguments into the conversation.
• [25:18] Mangram highlights racial discourse in early American robot stories.
• [27:40] The double role of comedy: critical and habituating.
• [34:15] On “the bubble” of comic representation in tech, and what changes or persists.
• [38:13] Phenomenological obsolescence and modernity.
• [40:25] Discussion of “natural” metaphors and authenticity in tech marketing.
• [42:09] Recalled books and contemporary matches.

Tone & Style

The episode is insightful yet accessible, blending literary theory, cultural criticism, pop references, and humor. The hosts maintain an inviting, collegial, and slightly self-deprecating tone, mirroring the intellectual openness of the podcast’s theme: using literature and comedy to make sense of dramatic technological change.

For Further Listening/Reading

If you want to better understand:

• How humor can both soothe and sharpen our anxieties about new technology,
• Why satire might be the truest mirror for our relationship with machines,
• And how "human" ways of coping are as much in flux as the tech we invent,

Ben Mangram’s The Comedy of Computation is an engaging and remarkably timely guide. The episode’s recommended novels (The Idiot, Conversations with Friends) offer compelling literary explorations of similar themes.