Ideas - Buttons give the illusion of power but hide the consequences

Episode Date: November 14, 2025

Whether mechanical or digital, a button delivers the promise of power — but it's far from simple. The small and mighty technology has a riveting history, a story of control, power, freedom and oppression. From the podcast Media Objects, this episode traces the evolution of the button, and asks what happens when every command is reduced to a single press.

This program is brought to you in part by Spex Savers. Every day, your eyes go through a lot. Squinting at screens, driving into the bright sun, reading in dim light, even late-night drives. That's why regular eye exams are so important. At Spec Savers, every standard eye exam includes an advanced OCT 3D eye scan, technology that helps independent optometrists detect eye and health conditions at their earliest stages. Take care of your eyes. Book your eye exam at Specsavers today from just $99, including an OCT scan.

Book at specksavers.cavers.caps are provided by independent optometrists. Prices may vary by location. Visit specksavers.cavers.cai to learn more. This is a CBC podcast. All right, now let me explain to you, learner, exactly what's going to happen and what you're supposed to do. The teacher will read a list of word pairs to you like these. A blue girl, nice day, fat neck, and so forth. Welcome to Ideas. I'm Nala Ayad. Incorrect. You'll now get a shock of 105 volts.

You're listening to Raw Tape from the infamous Milgram experiment. A controversial 1961 study on obedience to authority. Please continue, teacher. I know. I keep giving them shocks. Continue, please. The experiment at Yale University tested the willingness of participants to send electrical shocks to a stranger in another room.

315 volts? 330 volts. The shocks were fake, and the supposed test subjects' reactions were just acting, but people's obedience was real. Something's happened to that man in there. You better check in on him, sir. He won't answer me or nothing.

Please continue. Go on, please. The controversial experiment and its results had dark implications for human behavior. And it's been debated ever since. One of the most pivotal aspects of the experiment was this. The only thing that separated the obedient participant from the apparently suffering victim was just a button.

Continue, please. Every single button, regardless of what it does, makes the same promise, a promise of power. This is from media objects, a podcast from sound artists, the world according to sound, and experts at Cornell University. With the tiniest amount of physical effort, just the push of a finger, you can make something happen, satisfy a desire. Each episode focuses on one piece of the technological world that surrounds us, and in this episode, it's buttons. You are in control.

You don't even have to do any work. It's all done for you. All you have to do is push a button. This episode is based on the work of Rachel Plotnick, author of the book Power Button, a history of pleasure, panic, and the politics of pushing. Here is Media Objects, The Button. There's nothing natural or inevitable about buttons, or the act of pushing a button. Various constituencies over the years, especially advertisers and manufacturers,

have marshaled tremendous resources to make a buttons popular and alluring. Excerpt from Rachel Plotnick's book, Power Button, read by Tina Antalini. Up until around 150 years ago, there were only about two places you could find something like a modern-day button, on a firearm or a musical instrument. Aside from the triggers of guns or the keys of pianos, saxophones, and clarinets, there wasn't much in life that you could just press with your fingers to make something happen. In the 1880s, that began to change in the United States.

A new wave of non-musical, non-ballistic push buttons began to appear. And they had a very particular purpose, to allow those with privilege to make others satisfy their demands. These devices were known as call button. Call buttons first appeared in fancy hotels and wealthy homes. They were designed to ring bells that summoned waiters and servants to attend to a hotel guest or homeowner. From wealthy homes and hotels, buttons spread to factories and offices, where people in charge use them to direct workers, summon secretaries, and sound alarms. Regardless of location and precise effect, these early buttons shared the same essential function.

They were a way for those with power to command others to do their bidding. Generally speaking, those who had access to push buttons, occupied positions of status, wealthy homeowners, electricians, managers, bankers, and political figures. Conversely, those in positions of servitude, such as servants, chauffeurs, entry-level employees, and so on, were often made to heed the button's call. Rachel Plotnick, Power Button, page 22.

150 years later, this is still an essential element of the buttons that surround us. To push a button is to exercise privilege. Others do the work to build the appliance, generate the electricity, deliver the package, bring the meal. Whoever pushes a button reaps the fruit of another's labor. Part 2. Electrification button into American society in the early 20th century was the growth of a major new industry. Electric companies had a problem. They needed to convince the public to allow an unknown force

into their homes, offices, factories, and public spaces, a force that most people didn't understand, one that was dangerous, that could start fires, shock, even kill. Buttons became a major market. tool to sell this scary new power. That's me, folks. Your electric servant, flip a switch, press a button, and I go to work for you instantly. Electricity was advertised to the middle class as an unseen servant, which could be commanded with a mere touch of a finger.

There is a little guy who does for you what other folks could never do. Keep your food cooks for you. With a flip of a switch or two, runs your kitchen through the day, it gives you time to work or play, cut your budget down a lot, ready, kill a watt. Buttons made electricity simultaneously real, and yet magically and safely concealed. This concealment made buttons potent because they severed the visible connection between cause and effect. The entire mechanism, electrical connections,

control apparatus, motor, vanished behind the scenes. Only the push button remained visible on the surface like some last vestige and seemed to be responsible for the whole spectacle of motion all by itself. Rachel Plotnick, Power Button, Page 9. Electricity was extending the power and control of call buttons to the middle class. They too now had access to a technology that promised effortless gratification and hid all the work that went into delivering it. Push buttons, connoted magic, pleasure, and gratification,

as well as simplicity and aesthetic harmony, which appealed to inventors, manufacturers, and advertisers trying to promote electrification. Page 159. You can make your family's life much brighter, you will find your worth much lighter, it's as easy as can be to do. live better electrically you can have more time for fun and pleasure family moments you will treasure

it's an opportunity to live better electrically modern folks have learned to save their time and energy too you don't have to work and slave electricity do it for you can have your take and you can eat it Make life sweet. It's hard to feed it. What a thrill to be so free when you live, Electrically. Over the last hundred years, Buttons have proliferated into every cranny of American life. Despite the immense number of buttons today, they're all quite similar.

There are really only three kinds. One, buttons that only produce an effect when they are actively being pressed, like a doorbell. Two, buttons that stay on or off after being pressed, like on a light or an appliance. And three, buttons that set off an event, like the trigger of a gun or key of a keyboard. You can also categorize buttons by the medium they operate in. Again, there are only three major kinds. One, mechanical buttons that are connected to an apparatus they set in motion. Two, electrical buttons that complete a circuit and allow electricity to flow.

And three, digital buttons that initiate a series of operations embedded in computer code. Regardless of the variety or the medium, buttons all operate by the same logic. They are binary. There is no gray area. Every button, no matter how complicated or consequential the effect, reduces a person's choice to two options. Push or don't push. Do or don't. On or off.

Turn it off. Turn it off. Turn it off, turn it off, turn it off. Turn it off. Turn it on, turn it on, turn it on, turn it on now. Turn it on, turn it on, turn it on, turn it on. Turn it on, turn it on. Turn it on, turn it on.

Turn it on. Turn it on, turn it on. Turn it on, turn it on. You just turn it on. Turn it on. Turn it on. Turn it off, turn it off. Turn it back on.

Turn it off. Turn it off. Turn it on. It's good, turn it on. Turn it on, turn it on. Turn it on. Turn it on. Turn it on.

Part 4. Panic During World War II, the intercom systems on American bomber planes were often damaged, preventing the pilot from communicating with their crew, which was especially dangerous in emergency situations. To address the problem, engineers adapted a version of the button-operated fire and burglar alarms that had become common in the private sector. They began installing buttons in the cockpit that would ring bells throughout the plane, signaling that everyone should parachute out. Over time, more and more buttons were devised to allow the pilot to take emergency actions,

to spray extinguisher fluid, eject seats, or drop extra fuel tanks to prevent explosions. Like with all buttons, there was no middle ground. Pilots had to make a yes, no decision. Was a situation bad enough to hit the button or not. Pushing a button is most often not motivated by panic, but pleasure. The aim is to satisfy a desire. All buttons promise that if you push, something will be done for you. Ladies and gentlemen, here's where you sit to drive the easy way. in a push-button swept winged eye.

Now let's show you how it works. Part 5. Instant gratification. Well, the first step is that button, and an easy way to start. Next step, the button will be another simple part. The first major ad campaign to feature a button was for the Kodak camera, invented in 1888. It was advertised with the slogan, you press the button, we do the red. Companies and other industries quickly followed suit,

stalling buttons on their products and making the same pitch to consumers. Instant, effortless gratification. Well, that's it, folks. That's all the reach to it. And that's how you do it. Well. See what I mean?

A push-button range. Cooking control with your fingertips. Nothing could be easier or more natural. Have you tried DeSoto's new triple-range push-button driving? In DeSoto for 57, you just touch a button and go. Split-second getaway in the most exciting car. Look for this famous magic button. It's the sign of the exclusive frost-free system.

And remember, you never touch that button. It's push-button magic. It's the easiest, quickest cookie control you've ever seen. They've even curved the buttons to fit your fingertip. They're cool to the touch, and they stay that way. A washing machine with a push-button brain that selects from nine automatic wash cycles, introduced by Malley's Whirlpool. It's as simple as this.

Press a different button for every wash, every fabric, from superwash for heavies to delicious, even wash and wear. Each fabric gets its own perfect wash. With Whirlpool, you're sure of proven features, Like the exclusive magic mix that filters clean your suns. It's so easy, just push a button, step on the gas, and go. But the outstanding feature of this great new color set, the one big feature that sets it apart,

is an amazing new wireless wizard, electronic, remote control. So perfected, you can operate every control, all seven functions, tint, color brightness volume fine tuning channel selection

I can't type I don't take dictation I won't sharpen pencil I can't file my boss calls me indispensable Miss Jones Just a minute

Will you make a copy of this Naturally. I push the button on the Xerox 914. I make perfect copies of whatever my boss needs by just turning a knob and pushing a button. Anything he can see, I can copy black and white on ordinary cases and a lot of bad. That's fine.

Now what I'm going to do is strap down your arms to avoid any excessive movement on your part during the experiment. Is that too tight? This electrode is connected to the shock generator in the next room. And this electrode paste is to provide a good contact to avoid any blister or burn. Part 6. Pain Alright, now let me explain to you. Let me explain to you, Lerner, exactly what's going to happen and what you're supposed to do. The teacher will read a list of word pairs to you like these, a blue girl, nice day, fat neck, and so forth.

You are to try to remember each pair. Now if you get it correct, fine. If you make an error, however, you'll be punished with an electric shock, so of course it is to your advantage that you learn all these word pairs as quickly as possible. I can think so. Do you have any questions now before we go to the next room? In the early 1960s, as a direct result of World War II and Nazism, Stanley Milgram designed a series of experiments to test how much people would obey authority. Participants were told the study was going to determine if pain could help someone learn.

They were instructed to press a button that would give increasingly strong electric shocks to another person, the learner, whenever they incorrectly answered a question. Wrong. answer is day 285 volts continue please the person strapped the chair

was not actually being shocked but would scream or groan in pain every time the buttons were hit the answer is duck 435 volts says dangerous severe shock here next X on next one continue please

435 volts Next one, brave. Woman, soldier, dog, horse. Like with all buttons, there was a mediation between the cause and effect. Participants weren't shocking someone else directly. They were pushing a button that made it happen. This mediation was part of what made people more likely to obey authority and harm someone else. The more directly they were in contact with the person supposedly getting shocked,

the less likely they were to administer the shock. For example, Milgram found that participants were more likely to stop if they could hear the other person. Incorrect. You'll now get a shock of 105 volts. Hard head. Incorrect. 150 volts. Sad face.

That's all. Get me out of here. Get me out of here. Please. Continue. I hear starting to bother me. I refuse to go on. Let me out. I think we have to find out what's wrong in there first. It's absolutely essential as you continue.

Well, essential or not, this program isn't quite that important to me that I should go along doing something that I know nothing about, particularly if it's going to injure someone. But if there was more distance, if the participant couldn't hear the person supposedly getting shocked, they were more likely to continue. Some did, regardless, choosing to keep following orders and pressing the buttons to give larger and larger shocks. Continue, please. Go right on.

The experiment requires your continue, teacher. Please continue. The next word is sad. Sad. Face, music, clown, girl. Milgram found that more than half of the participants were willing to administer the maximum level. of shock. Answer, please. Wrong.

165 volts. Time. Sharp. Axe, needle, stick, blade. Answer, please. Wrong. 195 volts. 225 volts.

240 volts. 300 volts. 300 volts. 315 volts 330 volts 340 volts 345 volts 360 volts

360 volts 375 volts Are you all right Please continue teacher I keep giving them shocks I'm up to 390 Continue please

Something's happened to that man in there. You better check in on him, sir. He won't answer me or nothing. Please continue. Go on, please. You accept all the responsibility? Your responsibility is mine, correct. Please go on.

Gold, dollar, necklace, moon, paint. The results, as I observe them in the laboratory, are disturbing. They raise the possibility that human nature cannot be counted on to insulate men from brutality. and inhumane treatment at the direction of malevolent authority. We don't even necessarily need a malevolent authority. Through the buttons on our digital devices, we routinely do harm to others,

ranging from the support of abusive labor practices on services like Amazon, Uber, or DoorDash, to the killing of individuals with drones built for warfare. buttons have put a great distance between the person choosing to order takeout or shoot a projectile and those delivering the food or getting struck by the bullet. Continue, please. Go on. Want to go? Just continue, please.

All right, nice with slow. Laugh dance, truck, music. Answer, please. Sharp. Axe, needle, green. Green, grass, hat, ink, apple. Answer, please, God, care. Bull.

Answer, please. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Full. First.

Nighter. Rain, good. Time. Answer, please. Answer, please. Answer please. You're listening to Ideas, featuring an episode of the podcast Media Objects from The World According to Sound. You can find more at the world according to sound.org.

I'm Nala Ayad. This program is brought to you in part by Specksavers. Every day, your eyes go through a lot, squinting at screens, driving into the bright sun, reading in dim light, even late-night drive-night. That's why regular eye exams are so important. At Specsavers, every standard eye exam includes an advanced OCT 3D eye scan, technology that helps independent optometrists detect eye and health conditions at their earliest stages. Take care of your eyes. Book your eye exam at Specsavers today from just $99, including an OCT scan.

Book at Spexsavers.cavers.cai.a. Eye exams are provided by independent optometrists. Prices may vary by location. Visit Spexsavers.cair to learn more. Kids these days, people say we have so much more. Smartphones, video games, treats, and busy schedules. But more isn't always better. Because kids these days, we also have more health challenges than ever before.

More mental health issues, more need for life-saving surgeries, and more complex needs. Chio has a plan to transform pediatric care for kids like me. Join us. Because kids these days, we need you more than ever. Donate at geofoundation.com. Part 7. distance and speed A central aspect of the Nogram experiment

was that the buttons separated cause and effect it mitigated between the person delivering the shock and the one receiving it. Today, we take for granted how much buttons can create distance between cause and effect. But in the late 19th century, it was novel. One of the places it first made a major impact was in the realm of communication,

where it allowed people to accomplish things far quicker and from thousands of miles away. Buttons became central to a slew of office technologies that extended the speed and distance humans could communicate with their hands. Technologies like the telegraph and the typewriter. Typewriters were built with keys akin to the keyboard of a piano. By pushing the keys or buttons of a typewriter, people could write much faster than they could with pen and paper.

On May 24, 1844, Samuel Morris tapped out the first telegraph message. He was sitting in Washington, D.C., and said it to his assistant, Alfred Vale, in Baltimore, Maryland, 44 miles away. The message arrived almost instantly. It read, What hath God wrought? By the end of the 19th century, people in the U.S. would be sending nearly 200,000 of these instantaneous long-distance messages a day, all produced through the keys of a telegraph. Part 8, Expansion and Isolation In the early 20th century, the United States was undergoing a radical transformation. Cities were expanding, apartment buildings growing higher, homes larger, automobiles enclosed commuters, companies separated managers and workers into ever-distant offices and

factories. Consumers bought products made in increasingly distant places. In short, people were being pushed farther and farther apart. This change was being driven by American consumerism, which demanded more, bigger, faster. All of this was facilitated by buttons, telegraph keys, doorbells, buzzers, car horns, alarms, light switches, typewriters. Designers of homes, transportation, amusements, consumer products, and so on, viewed push buttons as signaling tools that could facilitate these spatial rearrangements. Efforts to extend the human hands reach, to get in touch, fit into broader changes in transportation, communication, and control, which involved the reordering of distance, the overcoming of spatial boundaries, the shortening of time horizons, and the ability to link distant populations in a more immediate and intense manner. Rachel Plotnick, Power Button, Page 11 These buttons were not just helping push Americans farther apart.

They also obscured the work and material processes that made their consumption possible. It was all hidden away, from the wires tucked behind walls and the electricity generated at far-off plants to the labor of those who had to respond whenever a button was pushed. The person pushing was not in contact with any of this. Every button they encountered reinforces perception that a need or desire could be fulfilled by some kind of magic that required no work

aside from the mere touch of a finger. You push a little button and you get hot chocolate push a little button and you get some tea the world's gone mad just pushing little buttons but what about you and me? You push a little button and you make a motor car push a little button and you watch TV Night and day we're pushing little buttons but what about you and me

They're always inventing something fine which is fully automatic and it saves you time Someday soon we'll all be very rich earning our money with a master switch Parts you push a little button and it's all done for you. Easier than saying ABC. The world's gone mad just pushing little buttons, but what about you and me? Part 9, Dysopia. They're always inventing something fine

Which is fully automatic and it saves you time Someday soon we'll all be very rich Earning our money with a master switch You push a little button and it's all done for you Much too easy you must agree Because one little man can push one little button And goes you and me The surface of the earth is only dust and mud.

No life remains on it, and you would need a respirator, or the cold of the outer air would kill you. One dies immediately in the outer air. I know, of course, I shall take all precautions. And besides, well, she considered and chose her words with care. In 1909, Ian Forrester published a short story called The Machine Stops, about a future where the Earth's surface is uninhabitable, and everyone lives underground and gets their needs met by pushing buttons connected to a giant machine.

He had isolated himself. For a moment, Vashti felt lonely. Then she generated the light and the sight of her room, flooded with radiance and studded with electric buttons revived her. There were buttons and switches everywhere. Buttons to call for food, for music, for clothing. There was the hot bath button by pressure of which a basin of imitation marble rose out of the floor, filled to the brim with a warm, deodorised liquid.

There was the cold bath button. There was the button that produced literature. And there were, of course, the buttons by which she communicated with her friends. The room, though it contained nothing, was in touch. with all that she cared for in the world. Vashti's neck move was to turn off the isolation switch and all the accumulations of the last... If you have a lot of questions and are worrying for answers,

push the button. If you want to know the age of the youthful ballet dancers, push the button. If you want to know the reason for a vexing lot of things, the worries of the commoners and discontent of kings, and while you have to coax the youthful wonder air she sings, push the button. In 1905, W.B. Nesbit wrote a poem that eerily predicted the prominent roll buttons would have in the future of the United States.

Push the button. Is it something as to fashion as to bonnet gloves or dress? Does the Christmas problem worry you and fill you with distress? Do you wonder if the damsel will reject you or say yes? Push the button. For the price of lamb or lobster, beef or veal or pork or mutton, push the button. For the work of all the authors from Old Chaucer down to Hutton. Push the button. Now the Information Bureau is the thing of cogs and wheels. At the shifting of a lever, all its knowledge it reveals. If you'd like to know the outcome of your doings and your deals, push the button. There's a button for your likings, for your longings and your joys. Push the button. And you needn't go to school so long as you've got the strength to shove. Push the button. If you want to ask a question and the dial don't reply, if the thing is out of gearing and its works have gone awry, do not go to

to the inventor and in anger ask him why, push the button. Consider the human hand. From the upper Paleolithic to the 19th century, the hand enjoyed what seemed like an interminable heyday. It still plays in a central role in industry, a few skilled toolmakers producing the operative parts of machines, to be operated by crowds of workers, requiring no more than a five-fingered claw

to feed in the material or simply an index finger to push the buttons. But ours is still a transitional stage, and there can be no doubt that the non-mechanized phases of industrial processes are being gradually eliminated. In the future, the human race could be living in a prone position

and using such four limbs as it still possesses to push buttons. From The Human of the Future by André Le Roy Coron, excerpt read by Eric Bourne, Assistant Professor in German Studies Cornell University. button don't you dare push that button press that button press the button push the button push the button push the button I'm just gonna push all buttons all the wrong buttons just don't push any buttons

Push the button, Max. Don't touch the button. No, don't push the button. Push the button. Thanks for holding the button, Mr. DeSantis. Don't push this button. So, we just tap a button and they go away. Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap.

Tap, tap, tap, tap. Tap, tap, tap, tap. Can you push the button? Next time is push the button. Don't touch the eject button. Hey, come on, dude. Hey, we shouldn't touch any more buttons. The event of a meltdown, push this button and only this button.

Don't push those buttons are going to do any good. Don't push the red button yet. Do you hear me? Don't push it yet. To push the little yellow button to load it. Oh, yeah, just push the blue button. Just push the white button. The white button.

The big round button. The big red button. This black button? The second button is the key button. And three buttons? Four buttons. Four buttons. five expulsions.

This baby was a five buttoner, but I took a button off. Six. Six. Seven, seven, seven, seven, seven, seven. Lily. Lily. Push the reverse button.

And push the go button. Just push the unlock button? Just push the control button. Pushed the emergency button. I pushed it. Reset button. Reset button. button whoa that's a big button that's the big button you don't just press the big button

no one is touching this button click the pause button okay press me in store button wrong button start button press the button press the button that says Just tap the microphone button. Buttons. Here goes the remote control ejecture button. That button launches all of our nuclear missile. And they want my finger off the nuclear button. This is a panic button.

Is your panic button? Got your panic button? No, press the panic button. The panic button is for emergencies only. It was a panic button. Part 10. Push button people. Today, buttons are ubiquitous.

We're constantly engaging with them and their logic. They reduce our choices to a simple. simple on-off binary. They promise instant gratification, and they involve us in hierarchies, where there are those who push the buttons and those who do all the labor to make the buttons work. The more they have become embedded in our everyday lives, the more they've become part of our identity. We use them to explain how we're feeling, and even to describe our own anatomy. The comparison is dehumanizing, equating people with machines. Some of the metaphors feel harmless, like the idea that you get mad because someone is pushing your buttons.

Others are clearly dangerous. Take this example from the history of medicine. During the late 19th and early 20th century in the U.S., doctors used the logic of the button to describe female sexuality. The clitoris itself was referred to as a button. Its malfunction was believed to cause errant sexual behavior, sexuality that did not conforms. to an extremely narrow male view of healthy sex. It became common to recommend and perform various surgeries on the clitoris

in an attempt to fix a woman's buttons. In a widely cited article about female circumcision, Dr. Robert T. Morris, 1892, wrote, The clitoris is a little electric button, which, pressed by adhesions, rings up the whole nervous system. The electric push button, which from irritation, it may ring up disastrous reflexes in remote parts of the body

or transform a healthy sexuality into a jangling sensuality. The idea that people are like machines that can be manipulated by pressing their buttons, gain traction in marketing, which gave birth to one of the most widely used button metaphors. The hot button. The earliest known reference of a hot button in marketing comes from a magazine published in 1944. Dental items of interest, volume 66, page 866.

Jack Lacey, a top rating salesman, says that sales are made by touching off a hot button within the prospect's mind. It's now common to think of people and their behavior in the binary terms of a button, a thing that can only be turned on or off. Most people don't push your buttons. They'll push your button. Excellent.

You're just trying to push your buttons. in which case he's a button pusher. Don't push my buttons, wiseacre. Don't let it push your buttons, Waddy. You're just the button I'm pushing. Okay, we'll stop pushing. Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Peyton Replace. This binary way of thinking about people extends beyond sex.

Anger or irritation are a result of having buttons pushed. Athletes who increase exertion have just flipped a switch. People who act rashly hit the panic button. All of these metaphors do the same thing. They reduce a person to a machine. Part 11. Losing Touch. I got a 22 GMC Yukon 1500XL. I'm going to show you all the buttons on this, what they do.

and I'm going to try my best to explain them to you. There are a lot of buttons. There are a lot of things that this brand new vehicle... Increasingly, buttons are digital, on phones, computers, tablets, which all offer the person who pushes them even less physical contact with the world, not even the sensation of pressing something down. There's growing nostalgia for actual buttons.

When Apple got rid of the one at the bottom of its iPhones, there was widespread outcry. Companies like Amazon and Google have teams of people working on button design. And physical buttons are coming back into vogue in consumer goods, appliances, electronics, and cars. Plaintatory, same with that other button. Okay, so this right here is the lock button for the windows. When I press that down, only I'm able to roll up or down the windows, no one else can. The 2022 GMC Denali has almost 100 buttons.

plus a large touchscreen on the dashboard with countless digital buttons. I usually like to just leave it to auto. And then if you press this button, your fog lights come on or your fog lights come off. So we got those taken care of next. This right here is the cruise control buttons. Set it with this button. You go, you de-accelerate with this button, you accelerate with this button, or you resume. Okay, so this right here, these buttons are you going to recline your seats?

And then this right here controls. So I'm pressing down right now. And then you just press the button. Makes it cool. Right now it's off. It's not going to open. You're lazy. If I want to do a voice command, I'll press this button.

You can just press this button and that's in the cold. So for shifting, you don't actually have a shifter. You just have these buttons right here. And then this is our back button, home button, scan, dial button. This is your AC button. This is the air. button. This button right here, when you press it, it collapses the side view mirrors. So that's good when you're parking. So this button is just the amount of these buttons right here. This button right here. If we press this button right here, it's going to do the defrostress as well. Turns it on or it turns off. You can kind of turn those on or off. This right here turns on or off. Turn all of that off to three-fourths. And then you just press it again to shut it.

Okay, so I think that's all the buttons I can see. Hopefully that helped and if you have any questions, let me know. Hey guys, just a quick video, I'm going to show you how I button mash. It's pretty simple once you get the hang of it. I mean, I learned it from a friend quite a few years ago and I've pretty much mastered it myself. What you do, take your thumb and put it on your index finger like that and put it on whatever button you want to mash, let's say X, and then you just flex your arm.

And that's all there is to it, pretty much. That's gotten me through everything I need to do, button mashing, including Solidus' chokehold of Doom, which is probably the worst. Because you have to go about this fast, and for like a minute long, and it just kills your arm. But yeah, this is the fastest method I've seen. It should get you through anything in any game, button mashing-wise. Part 12. An Invitation to Play

There is something fundamental about how buttons invite our hands and fingers to grasp them and to play with them, and that that has something pretty profound about our humanity. I mean, for good and for the bad, but yeah, not always for that. Roger Mosley is an assistant professor of music, and directs the Cornell Center for Historic Keyboards. He wrote a book called Keys to Play about the link between music and video games, which both often rely on fingers pushing buttons.

There's also, I think, a way in which a button is designed to accommodate and to receive a finger, and that's partly where that joy or fascination with buttons comes from, because we see them and we want to press them. It's just something very fundamental about that, something quite childlike about that, that, yeah, fascination and just curiosity about, oh, what does this do?

Press the button, find out. If you write on the button or above the button, don't press me, it only makes you want to press it more. There's a kind of, yeah, it taps in as something quite, quite, I think, deeply ambiguous about our desire to interact with the world and to see what happens, see, to sort of take advantage of this fact that this tiny gesture I make might have a massive impact on the world.

You know, you shouldn't do it, but you kind of want to do it all the more. Roger has written extensively on the nature of play and video games, particularly the controllers that are used to operate them, which are filled with buttons. There is also something interesting in how many of these, button interfaces are designed to be visually appealing, non-threatening, primary colors.

If you go back to the classic Nintendo, they're childlike. They do have an appeal, not just to children, but to the child in all of us. You know, yeah, they're non-threatening, they're fun, they're just saying, pick me up and play with me. Unlike in the real world, these buttons are not involving you in a power dynamic where you could cause someone harm. You don't have to worry about the consequences. That's where games do really enable you to fully give into that impulse just to press the button and to find out what it does. Because, you know, the game is sort of designed a way to respond to that and to show you what it does and then to inspire you to say, oh, well, if this happens, maybe this could happen. and that idea kind of exploring and finding creativity in the pushing of buttons,

in the combination of certain buttons or the sequencing of them, you know, that that's, I think, really where games and buttons do come together. Roger connects the controllers of video games back to earlier instruments of play, musical instruments, which are arguably where the first modern buttons appeared. At the keyboard center, Roder oversees dozens of instruments, from organs, harpsichords and clavichords to modern pianos. He's hoping to add a new instrument to the collection. It's an incredible, well, I think it's really beautiful.

It's called the Lumatone. It's totally button-tastic, yeah. So this really is a button interface, and that's partly because there were just so many of them. You couldn't have a full-size keyboard without many notes. I think there are 400 or something. And what that implies musically

is that you can create new sounds because it's microtonal. So you're playing basically between the craps of the traditional keyboard. You're making the whole musical spectrum of pitch much more granular. So there's a whole new domain to explore. It's a safe space where you can let your fingers loose, where you can push buttons with no fear and no purpose.

Purely for the pleasure of it. Okay, yeah, yeah, okay. Here we go now. I pushed a button. If you don't put the button, I'll push it myself. So many push your button. Which button is the button you're supposed to push? Media Objects is part of Ways of Knowing, a podcast dedicated to humanity's research and thought.

The analysis of buttons in this episode is based largely on the work of Rachel Plotnick, author of Power Button, a history of pleasure, panic, and the politics of pushing, published by MIT Press. Quotes in excerpts read by Tina Antalini. You push the button. Would you push that button? If you push that button? Because you don't know which button to push. Is this thing ready? With the touch of this button here?

I pushed this button. Media Objects is produced by the world according to sound and media studies at Cornell University, with support from the College of Arts and Sciences and the Society for the Humanities. Editing and Academic Council from Eric Bourne, Jeremy Braddock, and Paul Fleming. A list of the musical tracks in this episode can be found on our website. Button, Button, Who's Got the Button?

Ian Detterling wrote the trio in A minor for trumpet, saxophone, and clarinet, all early button instruments. Button! The song Push A Little Button was written in the 60s by composer Tony Hatch and performed by his 15-year-old sister, Annette. The song quickly fell into obscurity, but was revived in 2010. when the BBC used it in an advertisement about the ease of navigating its website. Eject buttons. The Lumitone song is a new piece from polychromatic composer Dolores Katerino. Press the rewind button on your mind.

And this final track from keyboardist and Beastie Boys collaborator Moneymark is called Push the Button. The World According to Sound is made by Chris Hoff and Sam Harnack. Open the door, open the door. That was The Button from a podcast called Media Objects. Beyond the button, you can also learn about the typewriter, the container, and the extension at the World According to Sound.org. This episode was adapted for ideas by Matthew Laysen Ryder. Technical production for this episode, Sam McNulty. Web producer Lisa Ayuso.

Senior producer Nicola Luxchich. Greg Kelly is the executive producer of ideas, and I'm Nala Ayyad. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cBC.ca.ca.com slash podcasts.