Spoiler : Transcription from "The Marvelous Machine" of the program Nightbeat which aired 6/5/1952. In the fictional story, Randy Stone, reporter for the Chicago Star, talks with an electronics professor named Keefer, who as an installer of a telephone encryption device called a "garbler," witnessed a murder at a bookie joint going as the high-brow "Allied Investments, Ltd," complete with swanky state-of-the-art, sprawling modern offices. Stone: But what you were doing was so great. Keefer: Really? What do you know about it? An interview with me, an article? What did you find out? That the mechanical brain can compute and evaluate, that it pulls mathematical answers out of the air, but did I tell you that a hundred of these machines could throw a million people out of work? Stone: They'll find something else. Keefer: There isn't anything else for the semiskilled. Only the people with training can survive. Did I tell you about the things we dream of a mechanical brain doing? Running a steel mill, for example. Only the skilled can survive and they're not being trained. Stone: But then they'll be trained. That's progress. What's wrong with it? You're beating yourself over the head for doing something fine. Keefer: Drop a rock in a glass of water. What happens? The water spills over the sides. It's called the theory of displacement. Stone: Those men are--- Keefer: The Devil with the men! You wanted to know why, then listen to the why. You ask a question; listen to the answer! The water spills over the sides. But drop a machine, a think machine, a fantastic machine into a large group of people, and it displaces some of them. What happens when they spill over the sides? Water just runs off, but human beings break! Stone: What should we do? Smash everything? Keefer: I don't care anymore. Can't you understand that? No one else thinks ahead. No one else thinks beyond today. Why should I? "Get mine while I can!" That's why I work for Allied. Stone: Professor Boswell isn't giving up. Keefer: Boswell is a visionary. Stone: He's staying there. He's fighting for what you believe in. Keefer: Boswell is lost. It's a lost cause. Stone: At least he's still trying to find the answer, no matter how misused his inventions are. But at least he's trying to find the answer. Keefer: Boswell can't see what he's doing. The killing, the--- Stone: Boswell doesn't condone murder, not the murder of millions or of one. Even the murder of a man like McNeil, but you do, because you know who murdered McNeil. Now you can't turn the clock back and you can't stop it from going ahead. But you can be decent, and fight for what's decent. Only decency begins at home. You have to start with yourself. [Keefer calls police and reports himself as a witness to murder.]

Spoiler : What a great piece of writing!