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.

This piece, which is adapted from the book Power Button: A History of Pleasure, Panic, and the Politics of Pushing (MIT Press), was originally published by the MIT Press Reader and has been ...

The following is an excerpt from Power Button: A History of Pleasure, Panic, and the Politics of Pushing by Rachel Plotnick. A successful Kodak camera slogan from the Eastman Company celebrated a ...

The original Xbox’s disc eject button was the most important button on the console — even more so than the power button. And Microsoft’s emphasis on the disc drive reflects an ongoing shift ...

What is a button? And when is it more than just a button? In the simplest terms, a button is a finger-activated mechanism for completing an electric circuit. In many ways, the root of the button ...