All day every day, throughout the United States, people push buttons—on coffee makers, TV remote controls, and even social media posts they “like.” For more than seven years, I’ve been trying to understand why, looking into where buttons came from, why people love them—and why people loathe them.

As I researched my recent book, Power Button: A History of Pleasure, Panic, and the Politics of Pushing (MIT Press, 2018), about the origins of American push-button society, five main themes stood out, influencing how I understand buttons and button-pushing culture.

1. Buttons aren’t actually easy to use

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