Push-Button Culture



Today our abundance of smartphones, computers, dishwashers and electric vacuum cleaners all supposedly leave more time for the 21st century human to lounge around and eat bonbons. Just push a button, and everything is automatic.

[…]

Doing the laundry in 1950 may have become much easier thanks to the rise of electric washing machines, but the societal expectations around how often one’s clothes should be cleaned shifted dramatically since, say, 1900. Cleaning a floor was decidedly harder in 1910 than it was in 1960 but the relative ease of use for appliances like the electric vacuum cleaner changed American expectations about what constituted “clean.”

[…]

But the promise of the push-button as the gateway to a life of leisure has its origins far earlier than the Space Age. Dating back to the late 19th and early 20th century, the push-button quickly evolved into the perfectly simple symbol of modernity back when electricity itself was first being introduced to American homes.

Whether it was for ringing doorbells, illuminating lamps, hailing domestic servants, or turning on any number of new electrical appliances, the push button arrived in full force as an interface that was supposed to save time and generally make life easier. Just push a button, and it’s all done automatically!

As Americans came into contact with more and more machines in the late 19th century, the push button was supposed to ameliorate heightened anxieties about the complexity of life—what Rachel Plotnick describes as a “pervasive cultural craving for efficient relationships between humans and machines.” Plotnick writes about the button as the interface of leisure in her 2012 paper “At the Interface: The Case of the Electric Push Button, 1880-1923.”



Ref: Will The Internet of Things Make Our Lives Any Easier? – Paleofuture
Ref: Push-Button Promises – psmag