When the push button was new, people were freaked
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When the push button was new, people were freaked
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Re: When the push button was new, people were freaked
#2Marshall McLuhan's _Understanding Media: The Extensions Of Man_ continues to provide critical insight.
Re: When the push button was new, people were freaked
#3Fascinating. There’s always a loss of lower-level knowledge when we introduce abstractions. Yet “we stand upon the shoulders of giants,” it’s the layers of abstractions underneath us that we don’t have to understand or even think about that free our minds to compose ever more amazing technology on top. Still, progression from the layer that you know and love to the next that paves over it is bittersweet.
Re: When the push button was new, people were freaked
#4> The word “button” itself comes from the French bouton, meaning pimple or projection, and to push or thrust forward.
What?
https://translate.google.com/?sl=fr&tl=en&text=bouton&op=tra...
Re: When the push button was new, people were freaked
#5> The word “button” itself comes from the French bouton, meaning pimple or projection, and to push or thrust forward. What? https://translate.google.com/?sl=fr&tl=en&text=bouton&op=tra...
Scroll down a little bit on that page, and you can see the alternate translation as "pimple".
Re: When the push button was new, people were freaked
#6> The word “button” itself comes from the French bouton, meaning pimple or projection, and to push or thrust forward. What? https://translate.google.com/?sl=fr&tl=en&text=bouton&op=tra...
Scroll down a little bit on that page, and you can see the alternate translation as "pimple".
While I agree that bouton can mean pimple or zit, it's the rest of the phrase that I don't understand. Bouton doesn't mean projection, and sure isn't a verb...
Re: When the push button was new, people were freaked
#7Earlier quoted context omitted.
Scroll down a little bit on that page, and you can see the alternate translation as "pimple".
While I agree that bouton can mean pimple or zit, it's the rest of the phrase that I don't understand. Bouton doesn't mean projection, and sure isn't a verb...
Note that the English word was derived from Old French, not Modern French. And Old French noun boton/bouton (”bud”) is itself formed from the Old French verb boter/bouter, “to thrust.” It’s had a variety of meanings in French generally related to ”thing that pushes out.”
Google Translate is not a very complete dictionary. You can find many more definitions in Trésor de la langue française informatisé :
https://www.cnrtl.fr/definition/bouton
It means “projection” in the sense of ”bit that sticks out,” like its use in goldsmithing or for the foot at the bottom of a harp.
Re: When the push button was new, people were freaked
#8Fascinating. There’s always a loss of lower-level knowledge when we introduce abstractions. Yet “we stand upon the shoulders of giants,” it’s the layers of abstractions underneath us that we don’t have to understand or even think about that free our minds to compose ever more amazing technology on top. Still, progression from the layer that you know and love to the next that paves over it is bittersweet.
Philosophizing a little bit (and in agreement with one of the quotes in the conclusion), I think the bittersweet feelings are precisely because very few people try to understand the box, because they consider it to be a black box.
But it's often a white box in reality. When the electric push buttons came out, you could trace the wires and usually see the mechanisms which were being triggered. The doorbell, for example.
But curiosity rarely seems to push us in that direction, it seems.
Re: When the push button was new, people were freaked
#9> Today, you’d probably have to schedule an electrician to fix what some children back then knew how to make: electric bells, buttons, and buzzers.
"Some" is doing a ton of work in this sentence describing 19th century children.
Re: When the push button was new, people were freaked
#10Marshall McLuhan's _Understanding Media: The Extensions Of Man_ continues to provide critical insight.
The book itself is so much richer than the catchphrases. It's just as important today as 60 years ago.