Power Switch by The MIT Press

Press a button to power on a TV; tap one to hail a ride; click to express approval. A finger's touch can activate appliances, vehicles, or systems, even when users don't grasp the underlying workings. How did buttons become ubiquitous? Why do people adore, detest, and dread them? In 'Power Button', Rachel Plotnick explores the roots of today's button-driven society by studying how buttons were crafted, dispersed, employed, rejected, and repurposed over time. Concentrating on 1880 to 1925, when 'technologies of the hand' flourished (like typewriters, telegraphs, and fingerprinting), Plotnick details how button pushing evolved into a means for digital command, promising seamless, discreet, and error-free control. Highlighting the dual digital nature of button pushing—as a finger's action and a binary operation (on/off, up/down)—Plotnick posits that the principles of pre-computational digital command foreshadow contemporary computer user concepts.