Week 1: The Button Before the Screen

What a button was before it was a rectangle on glass, and why every button since is a variation on the same trick.

22 February 2027

A button does not solve the problem it sits next to. It reports the problem to something else, somewhere you usually can’t see. That claim is set out here before the session asks you to test it against three buttons of your own.

Outline#

• a button as a translator from a small hand action to a remote consequence, not a device that acts on its own
• four physical buttons that make the case: doorbell, elevator call button, pedestrian crossing button, panic button
• what the week 1 log asks for: what happens on the other end of the press, not what the button looks like