After years of touchscreens taking over car dashboard, cellphones, and laptop keyboards, buttons are having a moment. Apple is bragging about it’s new buttons, European cars will now need more buttons to achieve a higher safety ranking, and we’re all obsessed with the Nintendo Switch 2’s new button… whatever it does. This so called “touchscreen backlash” is a big deal, but it’s also not the first time buttons were at the center of a technological controversy. In fact, the very invention of buttons was a hot topic.
I learned all about this fascinating history when I read, Power Button: A History of Pleasure, Panic, and the Politics of Pushing, who’s author Rachel Plotnick spoke to me for the video above. The book dives deep into the earliest years of this technology, when there were worries about the technology’s ability to hide labor and reinforce existing social hierarchies. If that sounds familiar, it’s because these are still issues we reckon with today, touchscreen or no.
These days, touchscreens have replaced many of the buttons in our daily lives and their ambiguity is what’s at issue. That can make typing on a phone frustrating and driving a car downright dangerous, but when it comes to video games, it’s not so black and white. Check out the video above to learn more about the humble history of buttons and why video game’s have been more resilient to the touchscreen take over. If you enjoy this video, be sure to check out the rest of our deep dives on YouTube!
The post Why the touchscreen backlash was different for video games appeared first on Polygon.
