Name: Power Button: A History of Pleasure, Panic, and the Politics of Pushing
ISBN: 9780262551953

Power Button: A History of Pleasure, Panic, and the Politics of Pushing

Rachel Plotnick

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Push a button and turn on the television; tap a button and get a ride; click a button and "like" something. The touch of a finger can set an appliance, a car, or a system in motion, even if the user doesn't understand the underlying mechanisms or algorithms. How did buttons become so ubiquitous? Why do people love them, loathe them, and fear them? In Power Button, Rachel Plotnick traces the origins of today's push-button society by examining how buttons have been made, distributed, used, rejected, and refashioned throughout history. Focusing on the period between 1880 and 1925, when "technologies of the hand" proliferated (including typewriters, telegraphs, and fingerprinting), Plotnick describes the ways that button pushing became a means for digital command, which promised effortless, discreet, and fool-proof control. Emphasizing the doubly digital nature of button pushing--as an act of the finger and a binary activity (on/off, up/down)--Plotnick suggests that the tenets of precomputational digital command anticipate contemporary ideas of computer users.

Plotnick discusses the uses of early push buttons to call servants, and the growing tensions between those who work with their hands and those who command with their fingers; automation as "automagic," enabling command at a distance; instant gratification, and the victory of light over darkness; and early twentieth-century imaginings of a future push-button culture. Push buttons, Plotnick tells us, have demonstrated remarkable staying power, despite efforts to cast button pushers as lazy, privileged, and even dangerous.

Book Details

Publisher: MIT Press
Publish Date: Apr 30th, 2024
Pages: 424
Language: English
Edition: undefined - undefined
Dimensions: 8.00in - 5.38in - 0.94in - 1.08lb
EAN: 9780262551953
Categories: • History• Media Studies• United States - General

About the Author

Rachel Plotnick is Assistant Professor in the Media School at Indiana University-Bloomington.

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What people are saying

Fuse Literary

@FuseLiterary

2 years

We are a full-service literary agency based in the Silicon Valley, with offices in San Francisco, San Diego, New York, Boston, Dallas, and Halifax.

Big congrats to @zacksoto! His #MiddleGrade #GraphicNovel series POWER BUTTON sold to @LernerBooks in a 2-book deal. THE FIRST INVASION drops this fall with book 2 out next year. Get ready for the otherworldly adventures of Kaz, Truly, and Trinn Cyclo! #MG #SFF #GN #DiverseBooks https://t.co/fVDsoSJdQI

Founding partner at Fuse Literary. Representing genre fiction for adults, young adults and middle grade authors. Loves SFF, mystery/thrillers, horror, romance.

Huge congrats to author @zacksoto & agent @gordonwarnock for their book deal with Graphic Universe: Power Buttons, a middle-grade graphic novel! https://t.co/LXdW7fvfaA https://t.co/s6rjYZvONE

Entertaining & educational conversations about science, tech, + more. Hosted by @iraflatow. From @WNYCStudios. #SciFriBookClub 📚 'Kaiju Preservation Society'

Taking lots of pictures this summer? Did you know that adding a button to cameras was once controversial? 📖 Learn all about it in this excerpt from Rachel Plotnick’s “Power Button.” https://t.co/6jVn1orx73

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What people are saying

Fuse Literary

@FuseLiterary

2 years

We are a full-service literary agency based in the Silicon Valley, with offices in San Francisco, San Diego, New York, Boston, Dallas, and Halifax.

Founding partner at Fuse Literary. Representing genre fiction for adults, young adults and middle grade authors. Loves SFF, mystery/thrillers, horror, romance.

Huge congrats to author @zacksoto & agent @gordonwarnock for their book deal with Graphic Universe: Power Buttons, a middle-grade graphic novel! https://t.co/LXdW7fvfaA https://t.co/s6rjYZvONE

twitter.com