[b]Gestures are body movements in which being expresses itself. One can read from them how the person gesticulating behaves in the world.[/b]
Vilém Flusser

[b]Why do we still watch the world? Because we have lost the remote control.[/b]
Dietmar Dath

In the advertising image used by an IT service provider, the familiar fast forward symbol has been inserted into the blue-white-gray-colored pattern of a view of the planet Earth from space. This push-button-planet is in turn immersed in the depths of a yellow, rapidly blinking space. Is the Earth really so extensively networked that at the touch of a button our actions can circle the globe as quick as a lightning flash? No problem; as long as you have the right software – the advertising motif suggests – anyone can become a global player. This is a promise that’s diametrically opposed to the icy mood that prevailed during the Cold War, when the »idée fixe« of the button made its global debut. Back then pressing the wrong button was enough to destroy the entire world in one fell swoop; today everyone should be in a position to shape the world at the touch of a button. Ironically enough, it was under the atomic bell jar of the Cold War that the road was paved for the »pacification« and »democratization« of the button. Between 1945 and 1990 a huge number of devices were produced in areas such as medical, security, communication and entertainment technology that were all operated using buttons: remote controls, fax machines, electronic doorbells, walkmen, handhelds and much, much more. At the touch of a button we could activate alarm systems, start audio cassettes and fire virtual remote-control weapons on portable video players. Ever since the spread of the PC gave birth to the keyboard society – embodied by the mouse, whose intelligent button can »read« fingerprints – the mouse button has controlled our lives. At the touch of a button we stay »in touch« with the world outside; everything is »just a click away.« The mobile phone extended this lifestyle into the great outdoors¹ and ushered in the first popular push-button ailment: when text messaging became a preferred form of communication, amplifying the cellphone fetish many times over, an epidemic of thumb arthritis broke out. Another side effect: pressing buttons is not only occupational therapy for the masses, but has also begun to permeate society as a basic mindset.

[b]The push-button society[/b]
Politics often promises change at the touch of a button. During the last election campaign in Germany, for example, the words »second vote« could be seen on many posters for the FDP party, emblazoned on a slightly three-dimensional-looking button. The slogan was: »More FDP, more jobs.« Another poster showed the immediate effect of taking FDP headache tablets. Complementing this concept was a report by Naomi Klein on brainwashing through economic shock therapies, which are capable despite democratic hurdles of transforming societies – at the touch of a button of course – into no-holds-barred neoliberal casinos.² In everyday life the push-button mentality often seems simply a matter of course when it comes to getting rid of inconvenient things: we dream of neutralizing annoying rivals, shutting ourselves away and unwinding in stressful situations, and, as the Hollywood film »Click« (2006) imagines, switching off our nerve-wracking social environment, all with one universal remote control. And aren’t door-slamming, abrupt outbreaks of violence and loud honking of a car horn not also symptomatic of the way we try to overcome problems today by pressing a button? Doesn’t our happiness these days even depend on buttons – in the form of telephone sex or via the life partners we find on the Internet?

Escapism options and life solutions, in right now mode, are what we want. The soundtrack is provided by designer drugs, energy drinks, instant glue, fast food and express mail. Everything has to happen right away, to give us the feeling of being in control. Those trying to make a show of the influence they wield present themselves as movers and shakers in key positions who can make money flow or create jobs at merely the touch of a button. At the same time, the push-button has come into fashion as an expression of self-empowerment. The soundtrack was provided here by the Chemical Brothers with their single »Galvanize« – the delayed climax feverishly calling out again and again: »The time has come to push the button!« The advertising motif described at the beginning with the planet-as-button shows that this logic is popular these days in the advertising industry. It encodes a product as desirable by promising that the road to success is as short as the touch of a button.

Increasingly frequently, however, advertising also promises »help at the touch of a button.« »1 liter for 10 liters« was for example the slogan of a Volvic initiative in which ten liters of clean drinking water could be produced in Ethiopia just by buying one bottle of water here. A tourist enterprise lured consumers with the slogan »1 LTU passenger=1 m2«. Behind this formula is the promise that every LTU ticket sold saves the corresponding area of rainforest. A toothpaste manufacturer addressed potential customers with an equally texting-ready slogan: Blend-a-med’s »1 tube=a 1-cent ›building block‹« was designed to help children in Brazil.

These mathematically seductive consumer equations that purport to represent »conscientious commerce«³ are accompanied by exhilarating pictures showing lush rainforests and beautiful natives. The networking of the planet has progressed so far that we are now in direct touch with these places and these people. Direct and without detours also describes the solutions we have at the ready for their problems. This assumption, perhaps the most perfidious expression of a push-button mentality, is hardly questioned anymore, but is also the most distinctive sign of another shift in paradigms. Up until now, the customer was viewed as a »willing purchasing instrument«⁴ whose urge to buy was manipulated by industry, virtually at the touch of a button. Now, he is suddenly the one pushing the button: the one who can exercise his creative muscles when buying⁵ and who sets things in motion⁶ – all of course at the touch of a button.

[b]World without buttons[/b]
In »Being There« (1979) Hollywood delivered a witty Cold-War-era commentary on the emerging push-button society. A gardener gets lost in an unsafe part of the city and is confronted by black youth. A fight is soon brewing and a ghetto kid draws his knife. The gardener reacts in self-defense the way he has seen in countless Westerns, action and horror flicks. He draws – not a pistol, but a remote control – and presses the button. Astounded, the likeable softie comes to the realization that in this situation pushing a button is no longer enough to change this unpleasant channel. What kind of person believes that things are really this simple? Up until he took this walk, the gardener has never left the safety of the house, spending his entire life in the garden or in front of the television – the former a hedged-in system, the latter an ersatz reality. This new image of humanity was depicted in a similar fashion by the rock group The Tubes in their media-critical concept album »Remote Control« (1978). The cover photo shows a baby sitting enthralled before a specially made »Vidi-Trainer« and watching the game show »Hollywood Squares.« What is this image trying to tell us? That we should cut down on our media consumption and venture out of the confines of our safe and familiar everyday world more often? Or perhaps also that people who want to control reality at the touch of a button are clueless softies?

All of this points to a powerlessness that is veritably laid bare by the latest technical developments. The introduction of touchpads and touchscreens seems to imply that the push-button addict can exert control with even less of an effort. But when buttons gradually lose their conventional status as objects and increasingly work without even being touched, the subject also forfeits the option of the authoritative gesture. In days when the disappearance of the button is heralding the next shedding of skin by the push-button society – forward-looking devices are now activated without touching, by eyetracking – control is a question of whether and how we see the world in which we, thoroughly networked as we are, find ourselves stuck. Seems somehow familiar, doesn’t it?

 

Translated by Jennifer Taylor-Gaida

 

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