The power of the button

So we’re here with Rachel Plotnick, an associate professor of cinema and media studies. Don’t get us talking about movies…

Oh, my gosh…

…at Indiana University, and the author of a book called “Power Button: A History of Pleasure, Panic, and the Politics of Pushing.” Rachel, we are here to talk buttons with you. Welcome!

Thank you so much for having me.

Happy to have you. I’ve found you by way of an IEEE Spectrum article about touchscreens. They’re going out. Tactile controls are coming back. The re-buttonization expertise of yours is in demand… How did we get here? It was like, buttons were all we had, and then we went no buttons, and now it’s like “Hey, buttons might be cool…”

Yeah, I think there’s kind of these interesting pendulum swings that happen with these different interfaces where something becomes really en vogue for a while, then not so much, then again… And the button is really a very old and enduring technology. The touchscreen is obviously much newer… For the last couple of decades I think there became this kind of what I call touchscreen mania, where it was like “Alright, everything’s got to be a touchscreen now”, and people got really hyped around that. But over time I think we’ve begun to see some of the cracks and flaws and problems with doing everything that way, and people are starting to maybe dial back a little bit and think about when’s the right situation for a touchscreen and when’s the right situation for a physical button.

I think that pendulum swing that you’re describing finds its way into all kinds of stuff that we do. And it’s like “New technology, or new shiny thing - let’s use it everywhere. Let’s throw out the old, and let’s only do the new. It’s going to fix everything.” And then we go that route a little while, and start to see the cracks or the misapplications where it’s like “Actually, it’s not so great in this particular…” And we learn, and we realize that broad brush could be more precise. But then sometimes we pendulum swing back the other way, and throw out the new for the old… But eventually, I think we hone in on what is practical and useful, and not just in push buttons… But in your book, you talk about kind of the history even of the button, and knobs, and switches… Can you give us, you know, not the whole history, but maybe a primer for all of human history for us pushing buttons? I assume it started somewhere around the Industrial Revolution, or I don’t know, when we had things that could be on the other side of a button.

Yeah, I’m going to dial that history down to just, you know, 60 seconds.

[laughs] Thank you.

We can condense that history. I think it’s a pretty fascinating story. You’re right that it dates back to electrification and industrialization in the late 1800s, early 1900s… And at that moment people were starting to deliberate, “How are we going to control our machines in a way that’s more effortless, that’s more automatic? How do we initiate a circuit, turn it on and off, open and close that circuit?” And there were a variety of answers to that problem, various kinds of switches and pulls and throws and toggles… But the button kind of emerged as one of the standard ways of doing those kinds of activities.

And a lot of that had to do with reducing the effort that it took, because you’d have to pull a heavy cord, or pull a lever, do something that was pretty effortful… But also, I think there was this idea around accessibility that buttons were supposedly easier to use. And one of the most fascinating things was how they were advertised to women and children, because they supposedly were not smart enough or strong enough to operate machines otherwise… So there was kind of this talk of the lowest common denominator, so easy a child could do it; anyone can push a button.

Not cool. Not cool.

Not cool… [laughs]

I do like the simplicity of a button, and I do get the move to that… I’m thinking of things like cars, you know? Obviously, the real answer is like, I’ve got this button in my vehicle where it auto-turns the engine on and off. So my engine has this where if I stop at a stoplight, it auto-offs, and there’s a button to turn that off.

To turn that feature off.

Yes. And thankfully, it’s not behind a screen. But as you were describing that, I’m in this state of like “Well, I don’t want a screen, I want a button.” But then you’re making me think, “Well, that button really is just a physical button that’s still just like the same button in the screen.” Because if the screen doesn’t work right or the operating system of whatever makes the screen work - does that mean that the button can’t work anymore? That’s the concern I would have.

[00:08:02.18] Yeah. I think it’s a really interesting tension between the flexibility of software, which is versatile, and hey, you can update that button, and today that button does one thing, tomorrow it can do another thing, and the physical button’s always going to do that one thing.

Right.

But on the other hand there is kind of that simplicity factor of “I can always go to this button. I know that it has a discrete task that it’s meant to operate.” And so I do think it becomes a question of “When is the right interface for the right kind of activity?” And as you said, driving in particular I think is one of those cases where we don’t want a lot of cognitive overload, and we don’t want to have to be looking around, trying to figure out “What am I supposed to press or push or tap?” when we’re also trying to do the act of driving.

And don’t change the core feature of a car, you know? If the wheel turns, that’s what makes the wheels move. Don’t make the wheel turn do the turn signal. Like, that would be silly, right? Keep the common feature set of that in place. I’m thinking of the Cybertruck. The Cybertruck is not so much anti this, but the turn – have either of you ever driven a Cybertruck?

No.

Okay. I’ve driven it one time. A friend of mine has one… And it’s just so crazy, because it has – I don’t know what the steering’s called. I’m not a fan, so that I know all the terms and whatnot… But the steering, the wheel does not turn like a normal wheel, or a traditional wheel, I should say, where you have to turn, turn, turn to make your left-hand or right-hand turn. It is very much just a very little – and if you can see the camera, I’m just doing a little motion. It’s not like big-big.

Like a race car style.

Yeah, it’s very – and it’s adaptive. But to drive it, you have to relearn how to drive it. When you take your foot off the gas - which is a button, right? A pedal’s a button. It’s not some sort of like computer screen switch. It’s literally a foot pedal, and it’s a toggle for you to analog how to make the vehicle move forward, or stop, or whatever. And as soon as you take your foot off the accelerator, it begins to decelerate. Not like a vehicle, like a non-Cybertruck; it begins to brake, basically. It’s basically the way the engine works. It’s a natural brake. So you actually don’t have to brake much in a Cybertruck, which is kind of cool, but you have to relearn how to drive. And I guess I’m bringing that up because sometimes you’ll change the common feature set of what are typically analog buttons or pedals or whatnot, and you have to relearn how to use them in this new, modern way because somebody decides to change it.

Yeah. I think that that is some of the tension, like you said, with the flexibility, right? It’s like, we can change it because it’s now actually disconnected from these previously mechanical things that this button was doing. But should we change it, or should we have it at all? And Rachel, when did we decide – I would peg it to the iPhone, but maybe there was prior art to be like “Buttons aren’t cool” all of a sudden. I do remember the BlackBerry was cool. And this is like 2000 – pre-iPhone. ’06, right? Because the iPhone was ‘07, I think. And it’s like BlackBerry was very cool, and it had all the buttons; it’s kind of a power user’s thing, and you could type real fast, because you had the whole keyboard there… And then the iPhone came out, zero buttons, or I guess it had the home button, and then like the power toggle on the right. But it was like a single pane of glass, as they say. And that might’ve been – okay, now I’m just answering the question for you, which… You’re the expert here.

This is great. You’re doing my job.

I’m thinking, is that it? Is that the one?

I can just sit here.

Yeah, yeah. Is that when it happened, or was there a different one?

No, I think that that’s probably right. I think that minimalist aesthetic took hold, where it was like “Alright, everything’s going to be smooth, and flat, and glass”, and I think the iPhone was really a big factor in that. Probably we were seeing this a little bit earlier in popular culture even. I often point to the movie Minority Report in 2001, where Tom Cruise was gesturing with his hands, and… I think people were starting to get excited about the idea of “How do we manipulate our data in a way that either minimally involves touching it, or doesn’t involve touching it at all?” And of course, we’ve seen that around VR as well, people getting interested in the idea of kind of just waving our hands around in the air. So that concept’s been around for a long time. But I do think – you’re right, between 2007 and 2009, that’s when this kind of minimalist touchscreen interface took hold. And that’s, in fact, when I started working on the topic. Everyone was saying “It’s the death of the button. We’re not even going to push buttons anymore in the next 10, 20 years.” And I was really fascinated by “Is society being gripped by this wholesale shift in the way that we interact with technology?” That seemed like such an interesting question.

[00:12:29.27] Where did you begin your research then? So you got curious… What was the next step?

Yeah, it kind of took a while. I mean, it wasn’t like I went to graduate school and said “You know, I’m going to research push buttons.” That’s not really my origin story. But I thought that that death of the button was kind of what sparked it, and then I thought “Alright, as I’m starting to think about pushing buttons, I realize that everywhere we turn, we see people doing this activity, whether it’s your coffee maker, or going up and down an elevator, driving your car, social media buttons… What are we doing all day but just pushing buttons?” That seemed like such an interesting way to talk about how people interact on a daily basis with their machines. And as I started digging into it, I just kind of became gripped with this question of “How did we get to be this way? Where did this technology come from? What were some of the cultural issues around pushing buttons?” And that led me to kind of this historical approach to say “Okay, I want to understand some of the earliest buttons and societal fantasies and fears around that”, and next thing I knew I was down this crazy wormhole trying to figure out all these things about buttons, and it was pretty interesting.

I’ve gotta imagine color matters, right? Like, certain buttons should be certain colors. Certain buttons should be concealed behind a piece of glass and a key… You must turn the key to push the button, or turn a key to open the thing to be able to turn the key to push the button…

Right. No Homer Simpson moments…

Yes, exactly. Or other moments, but sure.

Yeah, someone just actually emailed me to tell me about an experience at Universal Studios in Hollywood that involves the Simpsons, and I guess there is a nuclear reactor button there, and they’ve got like a countdown clock, how long has it been since someone’s pushed the button…

[laughs]

And you’re totally right, Adam, that I think there’s that psychology around button pushing that’s so fascinating. As soon as you tell someone you can’t push the button, all they want to do is push it, right? And of course, that gets back to these kind of grand fears of nuclear warfare, the big red button… But I think it’s also just in our nature that we want to do things that we’re told not to do.

Yeah.

You’re so right, though, about a lot of the activity we do in a day is pushing a button. I wonder if it would be a good exercise - or maybe not - for a podcast to imagine most of a day… Like, what’s the very first thing you do in the morning that you might push a button? Well, I have a toothbrush that has a button, that begins to, I don’t know, vibrate… I don’t know what it does. It does something to make my teeth get better. [laughter] My doctor recommended it. It’s dentist-approved, of course. So that’s at least one early morning button. I think maybe the next button might be like the lever from my shower. Like, is that a button? Or is it a lever? Are levers buttons? What do you think?

You know, the whole lever/key/button/switch distinction is very gray. That was a big problem for me. As soon as I started to research buttons, I was like “Well, what really is a button?” We could get pretty philosophical about that.

You got existential on it, you know?

I decided to just say “Okay, if someone calls it a button, I’m calling it a button. If they call it something else, then I’m not calling it a button.”

Let me just say, if I had to push a button to turn my shower on, I would love it if I could just push a button that says - I’m just guessing at a temperature - 100 degrees. Fahrenheit, of course. Or maybe give me 92 degrees. I want like a slightly cooler shower, because I don’t want to be so hot… I would love that button, where it’s like a precision button, versus like a fine-tuning the where is the – and I’ve got one of those ones that begins at 12 o’clock and you turn it to a certain part that’s like “Hey, that’s your hot temperature.”

[00:15:58.08] And it’s cold, cold, cold, cold, cold, and then it’s scalding hot.

That’s right. Yes.

There’s a whole like button and switch and design aspect to this with user experience, and the failure states of something like that, where it doesn’t have memory. So you have to build in the memory of where exactly – like how many degrees do you turn that sucker around in order to get exactly the way you like it? Whereas in software - and you can do this in hardware design as well - you can actually create switches or levers or buttons where it can either have helps for you, like clicks. It can click into a certain spot and you can know six clicks is perfect.

Feedback. Haptics.

Or it can have memory, where you’re like “Just go to the six click thing”, and it knows to do that. So there’s the – I think affordances is probably the word that designers use in order to help us get what we want out of a particular button. And yeah, I think the shower one is a good example of that. Also toasters… I mean, you can burn toast very easily because you set it to the wrong temp… When it’s I like, I like it at this degrees, for this long; just do that every time.

I don’t know about you, but my toaster goes to 10, and I never go to 10. I’m always at like three. I’m like “Who goes to 10?”

No.

What are you doing to go to 10? What kind of person are you?

And I think what you’re saying - you know, that kind of gets into the fact that I always tell people that buttons seem simple, but actually they’re really complex. Because when you think about knowing which button to push, at the right moment, who should be pushing it, especially… You know, imagine going into a DJ booth, or the cockpit of an airplane, or something… It’s not going to be super-intuitive to you if you’re not really familiar with that system, how to operate any of those things. So I think the button’s almost kind of seductive in that it seems really simplistic, but in a lot of situations it’s actually pretty complicated.

Especially a cockpit. I mean, you’ve got toggles, you’ve got flips and switches, then you’ve got the push thing… I think that’s the one where they’ve got the throttle, maybe even the yaw, or whatnot. I don’t know, I’m not a pilot. Mitchell might know, Jerod, since I was just editing the show with Mitchell…

Right.

You’ve got lots of different forms of buttons in a cockpit. Like, there’s no – and then what happens if this thing is no longer a binary on or off toggle? Some of it you might have to go back and forth 10 times to get a new functionality. Like, you’ve got this button that is not a button, it’s more of a toggle, that now the feature for this thing has to be three different options versus two… But you’ve got to swap the button out. You’ve got to get an actual button, or a slider, or something different.

I think that’s a case where buttons are actually intimidating. When you look in a cockpit, you’re like “This does not look simple.” But I think the allure - and Rachel, go back into some of your research as well, because I read an excerpt from your book where you were talking about some of the history of the sales around, like the selling of the idea, this fantasy of like “At the push of a button, all your wildest dreams will come true.” And of course, we also have the fear side of “If I push this button, a bomb will go off.” There’s sometimes hidden complexity behind a button, sometimes it’s as simple as switching something off and on… But what did they initially, when buttons became like in vogue, or like, whoever was out there selling buttons, what were they telling us? Like, what were we buying?

Yeah, you’re absolutely right that there was a lot of kind of consumer culture around push buttons initially. They were really a way to sell products. So you had Kodak with their amateur cameras, their slogan was “You press the button, we do the rest.” It was very much about “Hey, anyone can be a photographer, and now you don’t need to worry about how to develop your film, or very much at all”, which was very threatening to professional photographers who were used to kind of people not having the skills to be able to access that profession.

Other things like vending machines and elevators were some of the earliest button usages as well. And all of that, really, the rhetoric was around this idea of “Anyone can do it. Button pushing is so easy.” And I think, Jerod, to your point, there was the flip side of that then; there was the panic of “Oh my gosh, if anyone can push a button, what does that mean for our society?” Because then you do have that question of skill. We’ve kind of opened up the ranks of these technologies to everybody…

Right…

…but also, what happens if this button falls into the wrong hand, and now – whose finger’s on the button, and do we need to worry about that? So you have kind of this pleasure and panic at work at the same time.

[00:20:13.19] Yeah. We’ve experienced some of that with our children. We take for granted some things that adults know, and that need to be taught, like some obvious things… And one thing that I took for granted with kids - not that they wanted to push buttons, because I know that that’s like inherent in us, is like the desire to push a button, and we can talk more about that… But they have no thought of recourse on the other side of a button, and they have no idea what a button does, and that’s not going to stop them. As an adult, I think “I don’t know what that button does. I shouldn’t push it.” And I didn’t think I’d have to like explicitly teach that to every one of my children. But you do. You have to tell them. Because they’re going to push the button. Like, it’s just there. And there’s an education of like “That button could have so many things behind it that you have no idea what they are. If you don’t know what a button does, don’t push it.” And you’ve got to teach kids that. I’m just now sharing this for future parents to know - yes, you’re going to have to tell your kids not to. And here’s the kicker… Even after you tell them not to, they’re still going to push it.

Oh, yeah.

But at least you’ve done your job. At least you’ve warned them.

Yeah, it was kind of amazing to me that people were complaining about this even in 1905. You had kids who were running up to people’s doorbells and just ringing them when they weren’t supposed to, or they’d get behind the wheel of the car and honk the horn… So I guess this has always been a problem, and I have kids and find myself in this same situation, too. And it’s an issue of control, really. Like, my son used to get up at four in the morning just to go turn on the TV, so then we started hiding all the television remotes… And then we’d forget where we put them, we’re opening drawers… So who’s got the button? You know, it’s all about power in the house.

Oh, man. The button. Who’s got the button? Is that from a movie? I don’t think I know that phrase.

Well, there’s a book that you should get and read… It’s called “The good for nothing button.” I won’t tell you the story, but it’s a good book for kids.

Nice.

The good for nothing button.

The good for nothing button. Okay.

It’s about pushing buttons.

Well, they’ve gotta be good for something. So Rachel, when “The button is dead” narrative began to spread, and you got into this, did you believe it at first? Like, were you – because now we’re starting to think, and we’re seeing trends the other way, like “Yeah, we overstepped. We need buttons for some things, namely in a car, for instance…” But when that – because I kind of bought it. Like, I was ready to be done with wires, buttons… Internal combustion engines - I’m still cool with getting rid of those… But I’m just thinking “Buttons - let’s stick them around” now. Did you buy the hype of “It’s going to be touchscreens for everything”? Because I kind of bought it, honestly.

I think I must’ve always been a bit of a skeptic, because I guess I could have gone the other way and research touchscreens, and been like “This is the future. Let’s look at this!” But something instinctually, I guess, told me “Hey, let’s look at buttons.” And I think that certainly bore out. And maybe part of it is nostalgia now, part of it is a society that’s become a little bit burnt out on screens, and is tired of having to look at screens all the time… But I think even then I had the sense in 2009 of – anytime people say the death of something is coming, I’m always a little bit skeptical, because that seems so dramatic. And we’ve seen with many technologies that they tend to come back over time. Like, look at all the people into vinyl records now. So I’m not convinced that a lot of things really ever die out.

Yeah, “Video killed the radio star”, that kind of thing. It’s like nah, we just layer on, don’t we? We just add more… We don’t necessarily kill things. Of course, mediums do come and go in terms of their popularity and usage…

Break: [00:23:40.21]

But the touchscreen has a lot going for it. It also has a lot of drawbacks. However, I would say that over the last – is it 15? …almost 20 years since the first iPhone, that the touchscreen, like the software button, that’s really just not a real button, it’s a touchscreen, but it’s mimicking a button - it has gotten a lot better. I mean, they’ve gotten a lot of ways to provide – what’s it called, haptic feedback? It even feels like you’re pressing it now… I guess that’s the haptic feedback. There’s sound… There’s lots of things that they’ve done to kind of simulate a button press that makes it feel more real to us, but I think it doesn’t really solve the underlying issue. Do you think that’s fair to say? Well, maybe I’ll ask you what is the underlying issue. Why do we still need them, in your opinion?

I think that you’re right, there are a lot more kind of affordances to what a digital button can do now, and thinking about sound and feel and all of that… But at the end of the day, it’s still a visual technology, and that’s what I always remind people, is that we call it a touchscreen, but it’s a screen; it’s meant for looking at. And if you think about trying to operate your phone or your car touchscreen with your eyes closed, you’re not going to get that far. And if you’re blind, you’re definitely not going to get that far.

And so I think there’s a real accessibility issue around there, questions of safety, and the fact that at the end of the day those buttons are really only going to make sense if you’re staring at them. And when we think about the various kinds of mechanical buttons that we use in our daily lives, a lot of those can be operated just by knowing where they are, feeling around, and finding where the button is. And that lends itself to a certain kind of experience that’s quite different than the touchscreen.

The other thing too I think is just the limited sort of tactile experience you have with digital buttons. Like, if I’m looking at clothes, I want to touch them and feel what the fabric feels like. But at the end of the day, you’re always just going to be touching glass. Buttons, I think, can give us a little bit more nuance in terms of their textures and their qualities.

I’m thinking about the tried and true DVD or Blu-ray remote kind of thing. It’s not maybe something everybody would push, but I still have a Blu-ray player in my house. I’m that kind of crazy person where I still like physical media; not in all cases, but in some cases. But my Blu-ray remote - I’ve got to memorize where the Pause button is, because it’s usually dark when you’re watching a movie, right? You don’t have a good visual, so you don’t have full light… And then the buttons aren’t always illuminated buttons either, so you don’t know where they’re at, and so you have to sort of find it in the dark. If it was maybe a screen, it’s always moving, or I’ve got to announce the screen, now it’s bright, people’s eyes are changing, their vision’s changing… Whereas the typical remote is the remote. But I know where the Play and Pause button is. Sometimes I push the Menu button, and that’s the sad part, because it ruins the movie.

[laughs]

But anyways, but I’ve got it memorized. And it’s got a little – kind of like a little knob, or a little feeling on it. Like, a little extra piece, a little dimple or something like that, that tells me “This is the Play button” or “This is the Pause button. It’s okay to push.” So I kind of like that physical touch feeling, where I don’t have to have a visual of it. I can just feel it, and there you go. Or it could be Braille.

Yeah, I think that’s the nut of it, is like the physical feedback of it being right or wrong, without your eyes being involved. And the Apple TV remote, by the way, is terrible at this, because Apple decided – I think Jony Ive decided unilaterally for all of us that we didn’t really need any tactile feedback on our remotes. And the Apple TV remote - they’ve gotten better over the years. But if you go back to the original one, it’s this Pez dispenser… Actually smaller than that. It’s like a pack of gum, and there’s really not much to feel on it. It’s symmetrical, so it could be upside down or not, you don’t know… And there’s one physical button, I think the Menu button… Or maybe the Apple – no, that’s a couple buttons now. But they’re few and far between. You can’t tell them apart, because there’s no distinction, like you were mentioning, Adam, like the Braille, or like the little protrusions you can put to differentiate the two buttons without looking at them…

[00:30:23.03] Long story short, you almost have to always look at it, or just ruin the movie, or just like take 50/50 chances. Like, “I might be exiting this app, but here we go…” I’m trying to pause it so I go to the bathroom, but I’m going to just crank the volume up on accident. That’s a terrible one. And because - perfect situation, you’re in a dark room, and you just want like one more ounce of volume, but you end up exiting the app, because there’s no feel to those buttons. And so I guess, to Rachel’s point earlier, even buttons themselves are complicated. Like, you can do a button poorly, but a touch screen button is almost de facto poor in that context.

Yeah. It’s so situation-specific, I think… If we think about driving and having to keep our eyes on the road, or we think about being in a darkened room, those are times when we just need things at hand, and we don’t want to have to be moving back and forth between these different systems. But in other cases, obviously - you’re on your iPad, or you’re looking right at the thing and you can manipulate it in a way with your finger that might feel really pleasurable and way better than having to push buttons. So I do think it’s very context-specific.

Gaming to me is one of the most interesting ones, that despite all the different systems that have come out, it seems like gamers still just really want to push buttons. They want physical controls. And you can see someone who plays with a video game controller how well they know those buttons; and they’re not looking down at them, they’re just expert mashers.

Yes, for sure. I concur on that one. I feel like the modern game controller has more buttons than obviously like the NES from back in the day, or even the Atari. It began with a joystick, and one button. I couldn’t imagine gaming with a joystick and one button right now. I’d just be like “What?! How do you do that?”

Yeah.

But sure.

Well, that goes to the geography as well. I mean, our minds are very good at mapping geographies onto memory… And so we can remember with precision the location of buttons and to differentiate them. This is why a lot of people who are into like memorization and speed reading will talk about their mind palace, and like how they map actually memory to like made-up locations in their brain. I’ve never done any of that, I’ve just seen people talk about it. But it’s because we just have these geographic memories. We tie locations and directions very well to memory, which is why you can very quickly navigate a new city or a new town, after a couple of days you can remember kind of landmarks and where things are… Unless you’re just staring at your phone and letting it tell you which direction to go… Which - admittedly, that’s what I do nowadays.

Or you’re ubering…

Yeah, or you’re ubering around.

But if you’re liming, you know…

True.

A little easier. Does that translate to you, Rachel, liming?

Oh, yeah.

Okay, good.

I love those things. There’s no better way to get around a downtown of a city that is a nice one than a nice electric scooter, you know? [laughter]

We’ve scooted in some shady spots, I’m sure…

Yeah, every once in a while. But they go 15 miles an hour, or 25… You can get out of there quick.

You really do learn the city, though. You’re right. This idea of the mapping the geography to your brain… We learned Raleigh pretty quickly even, Jerod. In a matter of a day or two we knew where we were going because we scooted everywhere.

Yeah. And so I think we have a very good system for memorizing specifically the locations of buttons that we need. This is why when you’re driving and you can’t look away, and you need to push a button, maybe to turn your hazards on, for instance, most of the time when you turn your hazards on, you’re doing it quickly, because there’s a hazard. You’re trying to tell people that something abnormal is happening. And if you have to dial down through a touchscreen of particular menus and buttons - you know, fake buttons - in order to find it, that’s just not right. Now, you can probably, if you’ve hit your hazards enough time, even right now, picture in your head where that hazard button is on your dash, and you can hit it without looking, at least close to it, and then you can feel and verify “Yup, there it is”, and hit that sucker. I don’t think you can replace that with great haptics, or sounds, or any sort of digital feedback.

[00:34:24.07] I do think something interesting about that too, what you’re describing, is this kind of muscle memory. And all of that too just does take time with a system… Because as you were talking, I was thinking of all the places where I feel like an alien, or I feel like a totally incompetent user… You get into a rental car, you’ve never used any of the mirrors or the dash before… Or you’re a Mac user and you start using a PC, or vice versa, or you’ve never used a particular game system… I mean, in all those situations you can just be totally clumsy and just futzing about, when on the other hand you become this kind of expert user when you’ve built that muscle memory and you know exactly where it is.

So I think cars are an obvious one where we’re going to see a reversal… I mean, we’ve already started to see a reversal and a return to knobs and switches… We’re seeing it on phones as well. I mean, Apple – okay, maybe they’ve run out of ideas. That’s one of my thoughts on Apple, with the iPhone, is they’re out of new stuff, so they’re just like “Well, let’s just throw a camera button in there now.”

But also, now there’s a camera button, which is another one where if you want to quickly take a picture, and you’re going to hold your phone sideways all of a sudden, having a separate button that controls this particular important sub-function is worth having a piece of hardware there… Versus overloading a button to do a bunch of things, which they also do. Or software, software, software. And so now they’re putting another button on the iPhone. And so phones, cars… Is there anywhere else where they’re re-buttonifying things?

That’s a good question. As you were talking, it was making me think that it’s almost like we had to take the buttons away to figure out where we should put them back… I know there were some experiments with elevators, of taking buttons out of elevators, and you just have this kind of central nervous system of the elevator, where you just walk up to a kiosk and press your floor, and then it would queue up the elevator for all the different people… And so you get in and you just be in this steel box with absolutely nothing inside. And you can probably guess what happened… People really started to freak out about that.

Yes…

[laughs]

“Let me out of here…!” Yeah, even if the button doesn’t work, give me a button.

Yeah. Well, that’s the placebo button. We all want to feel like we’re in control, and there’s that that quality of agency that buttons have, like “I control this machine, not the other way around.” So when you take away the buttons, people get really upset.

Oh, yeah. What about – you said placebo buttons… That’s a real thing in elevators, right? Like, the Close Door button…

It does not work.

Did you did you do research on this? Did you confirm that it’s merely there for us to think we’re in control?

The majority of the time the elevator is controlled by a computer that has a timer, and no matter what you do, it’s going to go at that particular time. So most of the time it’s not going to do very much of anything. Same thing with the crosswalk button.

I was going to say…

Yup, same thing with the crosswalk buttons. Yup, yup.

Oh… I hit those profusely.

I refuse… They don’t work anymore. I know they don’t work. [laughter]

But people get angry when you take those away, too. They just want to press that button.

They just do.

Let me feel like I’ve let you know I’m here… I’m here now… Give me the timer. At least start the timer, right? That might do it. It may not be like “Hey, crosswalk now.” It’s more like “Someone’s here. Let’s begin the process to allow someone to walk.” Yes… Or just jaywalk. Don’t do that.

[00:37:43.00] So this is related. It’s not a button, but it’s the area of lore. How about streetlights and cars? There have been stories of specific things you can do at particular streetlights… For instance - and I’ve been told these things. I’ve never confirmed any, but I’ve tried them all. Like flashing your brights… There’s a there’s a sensor on the top of the light, if you flash your brights at the light – if you’re the only car there, for instance, and you’re at a red light at a four-way stop, flash your brights. It will then know that you’re coming and switch it. That’s one. The other one is there’s sensors. There’s weight sensors in the concrete at the stoplight. And you have to make sure you’re on them. And if you are – this is usually for stoplights that have not much traffic, and they always stay green one direction… But when a car is there, they just flip for that car. Maybe you’re not an expert on this, Rachel, or maybe, Adam, you know… But are those just old wives tales that they might say? Or is that legit?

I wish I knew… Maybe Adam knows. But I do think that gets at this issue of like we could make most things automatic now if we want to. We don’t really need to push buttons to do anything. Everything can be sensors and automatic, timer this, timer that… We could live in a world where everything’s just kind of auto-controlled for us… But yeah, I don’t know, Adam, maybe you’ve got a better answer on that.

Adam, do you know about that?

I don’t know about the flashing the brights, but I do know there’s a sensor in some cases; not in all cases, but I can concur on this one, because we recently got a light leaving my neighborhood for which there was not a light before; there was a Stop sign. But there was also a lot of wrecks. And so there was an occasional wreck at least once a month. Somebody had a fender bender because “Hey, let me out.” “No, you can’t come.” You know, all that road situation. But now we have a red light, and sometimes I’ll be out late, going to the store, like 11 o’clock… Which is not super-late, but it’s pretty late for a small town. Like, our small town shuts down at eight. There’s nothing open after eight. So if you’re out after eight, it might also be midnight. It’s still late, kind of thing. And so I’m sitting at this red light for a good five minutes before I realized the thing had not turned green. And I was just doing my thing as a driver… And it’s a new light for us. And so I’m like “Well, maybe there’s a sensor! Let me back up, because I’m past the line, because I’m anxious.” Because prior to this it was a stoplight; you would pull out far enough so you can see around the turn, and confirm and drive away. And so I’m still learning how to use this intersection.

So I back up, and I wait. And the red light is still red. And I see the opposing sides, I can see that the lights are doing their thing. Still green. They go to yellow. They go to red. Here I’m still red. Now we’re all red. Where is my green light?

Brutal.

So what do I do?

You run it.

I waited 10 minutes, because I was like “Okay, I’m not going to get pulled over…”

[laughs]

10 minutes?!

You’re even more compliant than most people on Earth, I think.

Well, I was like “Well, maybe there’s a cop nearby here, and this is a trap.”

Have you ever sat there and you’re just like “I should just run it” and then you realize no one’s there, and you’re like “I still haven’t run it. I need to run it.”

Yeah… I wasted 10 minutes of my life. That’s the story. I wasted 10 minutes of my life thinking there was a sensor, and there was no sensor. So I don’t know, is the long story short. I don’t know if there’s sensors or not. I know I tried to see if there was one…

[laughs] I thought you were gonna confirm.

…and I was waiting, and it did not happen, and I ended up running the red light.

Good story.

Don’t listen to this, cops. It’s not true. I’m just – this is just fodder for a podcast.

What’s funny is these - what I call them as wives tales, because I don’t know if they’re true or not, but I’ve used them my entire life… You know, it’s kind of like pushing the crosswalk. Like, “Well, it might help.” However, now I’m getting 16-year-old children and I’m teaching them the drive, and I’m wondering “Do I pass on my lore? Do I tell them these tips? Or is it like completely insane that I do this, and I shouldn’t actually tell them?” So thanks for not really helping, y’all… But at least now you know some of my struggles.

Well, I think because we don’t know how so many machines work, and they are so impenetrable to us, we have to come up with this folklore and all this local wisdom… Because we can’t really see how the machine works, or what makes it do what it does, and so it leads people to do a lot of wild and crazy things to try to figure out how to game the system.

Ain’t that right. Just trying to like come up with a unified theory of how things work. You’re like “Here’s how I think this is working, but it’s a black box, I have no idea how it’s working.” Oh man, software developers understand that…

[00:42:06.20] Have you considered as part of your research in your book to create a decision tree of when to make it a button and when to make it “Okay, this could be either/or kind of thing”? Is there any guidance you have, or expertise based upon your research that says “I can go look at this and as I’m a designer or a decision-maker in the idea of a button or no button, or how to deal with the scenario” - do you have any wisdom to share, like a decision tree, or anything that says “Yes, in this case button” or “No, in this case digital is fine”?

That’s a great question. I think a lot of people are interested in that and wanting some kind of standardization or some kind of system for deciding when to put these things in which situations… And I’m not a UX expert and I’m not an HCI expert, so I don’t do much in the way of kind of saying “This is right or wrong.” I know there are regulators that are starting to do this kind of work. I just saw in the EU that they’re actually requiring cars go back to having physical buttons instead of touchscreens for things like turn signals, and windshield wipers… So I think we’re going to see more legislation like that, maybe more standardization of things… Especially in safety situations.

I’ve also talked to people about things like defibrillators, and CT scanners, and X-rays - you know, medical situations when you have to push a button… And it seems like any time life or death is involved, or people’s well-being is at stake, probably a touchscreen is not going to be the right way to go, because it’s going to involve a lot more machinations to do that. And I do know that studies have shown that it just takes longer to push buttons on touchscreens. Even simple things take more time than when you’re reaching for a physical button. So I wish I had a list of best practices… I do think a lot of it is situation-specific.

Yeah, for sure. It’s probably hard to create a decision tree like that for all buttons, in all scenarios, for all things, because you’re right there – back to the Cybertruck, for example… And maybe this is the case for most Tesla cars and vehicles, I’m not really sure. In my experience, I haven’t really driven any Tesla. You can confirm this, Jerod. You drove a Tesla before.

Yeah.

The shifter is in the screen.

Yeah…

I’m like “Okay, I’ve gotta –” I think I had to slide my finger to park, or to drive… It was like some sort of abnormal, not the way of every driven car I’ve ever driven in my life… And so I’m like “What? How is that there?” And I’m sure once you’ve become accustomed to it it’s okay, but imagine if you’re James Bond. Just imagine this. And you have to get away from the bad guys, right? And you hop into a Cybertruck and you’ve never driven one before. You’re going to get caught, because you don’t know how to push it to drive, you know? [laughs]

That would be a funny little sketch.

That would be really funny.

Or when you take your foot off the accelerator, it’s going to start braking on you. Like, that’s not what’s supposed to happen. Don’t start braking when I accidentally just remove my foot. You have to always have your foot on the accelerator. It’s so strange.

There’s a decision tree for you. It’s just “Could James Bond do it or not?” And then, you know…

Right. If James Bond would die, then we need physical buttons here, man.

Yeah, that’s it. You just figured it out.

If he can figure it out, you’re good to go. Yeah, I think medical is an interesting one… I think you’re on point with – like, if it’s dangerous, if there’s large consequences, you need not just physical buttons, but going back to Adam’s reference of like the nuclear buttons… Underneath a piece of glass, with timing, with like the key and the turn, maybe there’s three buttons you have to push… Like, the more consequences are hidden underneath that button push, or the result of the button push, there should be more ceremony, more importance, more constraints around the button.

Yeah, it’s almost like it has to be made more complex in certain situations and simpler in other ones. Like the defibrillator case, a lot of people – these are automatic defibrillators that are installed in places, AEDs like in shopping malls, or in a city, so that you could administer first aid if someone’s having a heart attack right in front of you. And they want average citizens to do it, but they’ve found that a lot of people are just too anxious to push the button, because they’re so worried “Hey, what’s going to happen if I electrify this person? I don’t want to push the button.”

[00:46:16.12] So they were trying to figure out “How do we make this simplistic enough that people won’t be afraid to actually use it?” In other cases it’s like “Alright, let’s put 15 layers of security around this thing so that people will be dissuaded from using it.

Yeah. Simplicity is good, and complexity is good. Simplicity in the fact that you’ve got one button… Back to the Kodak camera. “Hey, even you can push the button.” I agree with that. It’s kind of cool. Like, you’ve got this automatic camera, all you had to do was push the button and turn the thing. There was two steps and you could take photos. Or in the case of something complex or catastrophic, multiple steps before the button push, and don’t make it so simple.

But the world in which we don’t need any buttons - probably not coming anytime soon. What I find so interesting, Rachel, is you go from this topic of buttons and tactile controls to what you’re working on now, which is smudges, sweat, coffee spills…

What…?!

I’ve got to hear this story. So what you’re working on now, “License to spill: Where dry devices meet liquid lives.” Where did this come from? This seems like it’s out of left field.

You know, I like to keep people guessing a little bit, I guess…

[laughs]

…but they’re actually not as far afield as they see them. I’ve always been interested in interfaces, and just thinking about how people interface more, you know, metaphorically with their devices. And I guess maybe this project emerged out of the pandemic and also having children, but I got really fascinated by kind of messiness and care, and how we have to negotiate our devices in all these situations… Like, what happens when you spill coffee on your laptop keyboard? What happens if you drop your phone in the toilet? What about wanting to take your smartwatch in the shower, or if you start sweating with your Fitbit? …things like that. And I realized there’s just a lot of interesting things happening around our environments and our bodies and our devices, and maintenance and care is kind of a real problem. So I looked at issues of waterproofing and how that’s kind of evolved over time, everything from wristwatches to current smartphones, and thinking about what we do to kind of keep our devices alive in all of these situations. It’s actually pretty tricky.

How do you go about looking into something like that?

It was really not easy, actually. Just just like buttons, it was like “Alright, well, which buttons should I study? And which liquids should I study? Which devices?” But I kind of take this long historical approach. I actually start out with looking at babies who were teething on telephone cords in the 1900s. They kept getting saliva on the cord, and then people would lose their phone service, which was pretty fascinating.

I look at things like vinyl records and how smudges on the disc would create problems with it being able to play music. And then I move all the way into things like the Sony Walkman and early PCs, and keyboards and all the problems around liquids and dust, and things like that. And then moving more into the present, with wearables and smartphones, and things like that.

So I kind of took this long range approach of thinking about “Hey, this kind of messiness”, what I call media hygiene, how we kind of protect our devices from ourselves - it has been a problem for a really long time, but we kind of negotiated it in different ways at different moments. Even the buttons - they get wet, they get dirty… You’re going to have problems.

Media hygiene. Is part of your study how many germs are on my iPhone kind of thing? Or is it in that realm?

[00:49:39.27] I looked at that a little bit, yeah. I mean, there was a lot of talk, especially during the pandemic, about what’s appropriate for cleaning your phone, what are you allowed to put on it, what are you not, what happens if you take it in the bathroom… And I think that there’s – you know, obviously there’s contamination issues and health issues around that… But it’s also like “Where do we want our media?” Is it socially acceptable to livestream from your bathtub? Do you put a TV in your shower? Is it good to disconnect in certain situations? Where do we actually want our devices to go? And some people actually say “Hey, it’s better that this thing isn’t waterproof, because that way I have to take a break.” So there’s an interesting kind of dialogue there.

Break: [00:50:16.16]

I’m reminded of the Truman Show, where everybody’s watching Truman, of course, as the story climaxes, and will he or will he not escape his little enclave… New Haven? I don’t know what it was called. And everyone’s watching all around the world in their different contexts. And there’s the one guy who’s in his tub, and he’s in his tub the whole movie, watching this –

Splashing, too. Big splashes.

Yeah. And by the end he’s getting excited, he’s splashing, and becoming going crazy… I’m thinking “You’re about to electrocute yourself, dude.” So that would be a time not to use, I think, electricity, would be when we’re splashing around in the tub, but…

Yeah, there were a lot of terrible stories about that, especially in the ’20s and ‘30s, people dropping their radios in the bathtub, even children… You know, horrible deaths from electrocution. And obviously now we don’t have to worry about that as much as we used to. But I think there’s still kind of a stigma around liquids and electronics. Like, people immediately are like “Put that drink away. Don’t take that there.” We still kind of tiptoe around these issues. We haven’t kind of overcome those thresholds, to some degree, the taboo of it.

Who is this book for? Is it for everyday people like Jerod and I, that we’re just going to start taking caution or knowing when or what to expect with different devices? Like, who’s the consumer or the reader, generally?

[00:54:01.16] I’m hoping it’ll be interesting for academics and laypeople. I think it speaks to a story that all of us kind of navigate on a daily basis. We often don’t realize just how much we’re thinking about “Should I put this in a case or not? Do I take this to the beach with me or do I leave it behind? Oh crap, I poured this entire mug of coffee on my computer. What do I do now?” So I’m hoping that the stories will kind of resonate with people who live through that, but also from an academic perspective, trying to help people understand what media hygiene is, and how it’s kind of been this pervasive problem for the maintenance and care of technology.

How much did you open up the topic of right to repair, considering buttons? Like, going back to buttons, if it’s behind a screen, it’s less easily repairable. Whereas if it’s a digital analog button, let’s just say… I’m sure there’s some digital behind the analogness of the button… But you can at least potentially swap out that sensor to correct that button issue. How much did you push the button, I suppose, on this topic?

Haah…! [laughter]

Nice!

Somebody had to do it.

No, that was definitely a part of my study. I think right to repair is really important to think about. And obviously, over time our devices have gotten harder and harder to repair. So if you do have an accident, the consequences for that are much greater than they used to be. And a lot of what I focus on is how there’s this disparity between advertising, like “Oh, it’s so sexy and pretty. You can take your watch underwater. You can go diving with it. Don’t worry, a spill is just an oops, it’s no big deal.” But then watching how people have navigated horrible warranty plans, and liquid contact indicators… Oh, it got tripped, therefore now your whole warranty is invalidated, and we can’t repair this thing. You have to get a new one.

So I think there are a lot of kind of real world consequences for this, where we as consumers get penalized for our quote-unquote bad hygiene. We’re treated like bad users, and these companies continue to kind of profit off of all of our mistakes, if you will.

How long was this research? How deep did you have to go? How was it funded? What was the purpose of this research? Obviously, you wrote a book, but was that the whole point of the research? What’s the backstory there?

Yeah, it took a few years. I started probably about 2019 working on this. I didn’t know exactly what it was going to turn into at that time. Initially, I kind of started with the tactile stuff. I was looking at smudges on our smartphones, and just kind of thinking about screens and tactility and handling, since that kind of goes along with buttons; just touching stuff, right? And it kind of morphed over time into thinking about liquids.

So it’s been about four years that I was working on the project. And I went into some archives, looked at Rolex’s archives and kind of the history of waterproofing wristwatches in the military, and kind of went down a lot of paths as I was developing this… But the hope was always that it was going to turn into this kind of bigger book project.

So stop me if you’ve heard this one. This is going to sound like a joke, but it’s not a joke. When we talk about computer/human interactions and hygiene - how do you eat Cheetos while you’re coding? This is not a joke. This is real. I know it sounds like a joke. I learned this from Johnny Boursiquot, who’s a friend of ours here on the show. He either really does this, or he convinced all of us that he really does this. How do you eat Cheetos while you’re coding? Anybody want to guess? Let me say it this way, “How does Johnny Boursiquot eat Cheetos while he’s coding?”

One-handed?

No. Good guess. Adam, do you want to give it a shot?

Dispensed. There’s some sort of dispenser.

Very close. Chopsticks.

Chopsticks… I’ve heard that.

Yeah. So that’s real-world dealing with two desires. Your desire to work and your desire to eat Cheetos. I guess three desires - and not to have Cheetos all over your stinking keyboard… Because that’s some hygiene problems right there.

Yeah, there’s a good section of the book that looks at torture testing and all of the kind of bizarre trials we put our devices to see what will they stand up to. And in fact, I look at programmers and think about all night coding, and kind of the desire to have food and drinks near the device, and how people have had to navigate that… Now I’m doing something on energy drinks and gamers… So I think the mixing of food and drinks and snacks with computers is super-interesting.

Yeah, because they don’t really mix, but we want them to so bad.

Yeah. Yeah.

[00:58:16.29] Gosh…

[laughs]

Whether that’s to our benefit, I don’t know.

Yeah, I don’t know about that either.

There’s a note here, at least in the description of the book, that says “Obsolescence culture.” What does that reference to? Like planned obsolescence, or something else?

Yeah, I think – well, the way that things get made obsolete when they break, and that it’s so easy to break things now. “Oh, I spilled this tiny bit of liquid on it, therefore now the whole thing is broken. Go out and buy a new one.” It’s pretty painful.

I’ll have to share my example then, since that’s how it works… So we had a microwave. I say “had” because we had to swap it out. Thankfully, we could get the exact same one. And so this issue with the microwave was not the function of the microwave. It was the digital touchpad, which is kind of like analog buttons, but they’re just really like these depressible buttons. It’s sort of the non-screen buttons.

Yeah, those are membranes; membrane keys.

Membrane keys. There you go. Well, when you push certain buttons, they wouldn’t do the function that the button did anymore. And then that was okay, because I was like “Well, I don’t really push nine so frequently, so I’m okay with that. Fine.” I can’t do 19 minutes, which I would never do in a microwave unless it was something crazy, I suppose… Or nine minutes. But okay, I can live without the nine button. But then it became of the other buttons, like zero, or one.

It’s like “Well, I have to have one…” You know? And then the screen that shows you – like the liquid display, the LCD, if that’s what it was. I don’t think it was an LCD, but some sort of liquid crystal display… Which is LCD. [laughter]

I’m just watching you figure this out as you go…

I was trying to be more specific and then I messed up again. So just follow me. Just do your best, okay?

We’re with you, man. We’re with you.

Stick with the buttons.

The buttons. The screen stopped working. So we’re like “Okay, this microwave is no longer usable.” And we don’t microwave so frequently that it was like that big of a deal, but we had to replace it, because there were certain things, like maybe popcorn, or just certain things you would use it for.

Sure.

And then it was like “Well, we have to replace it with one that fits in there”, because it was a built-in microwave, and it had a surround around it. And so thankfully, we can go and replace it. So we literally took this microwave that functioned properly, that could not be commanded properly. And it became obsolete, because no one – I can’t give it to somebody. Maybe I can share it with the electronics person who can repair it, but then they have to have enough value in the process to repair it to get the value back out from their time.

So here’s me, spending 200 bucks on a new microwave or whatever the number was, for the same exact thing, just to get done. It’s like “Ah, fixed.” And it was just it was; like, the same microwave. And we got rid of it because of that.

It’s that single point of failure, you know? The fact that one button could ruin the whole device, I think, is so problematic. And you’re so right. I mean, most people - you take it to any repair person and they say “Oh, we don’t want to fix it. It would be cheaper to just get you a new one.”

Frustrating.

Brutal.

What’s with this new research thing? Can you talk more about this energy drinks and computers, and - can you tease? Where is it at? Have you put anything online yet?

Not yet. Actually, I’m doing a talk on Twitch on January 31st. I guess I’ll plug that.

Nice.

For ROMchip, it’s a game history journal. So we’re doing a talk on Twitch, and… Yeah, I’m kind of thinking, again, sort of bringing the past and present into conversation. I’m looking at things like pilots and fatigue, and different uses of caffeine and chemicals to try to keep people awake to do their jobs… And I was just really interested in this question of how energy drinks have become so pervasive in gaming, the idea of the all night gamer, and what do we kind of put our bodies through to get them to consume more media? So it’s kind of like the equivalent of binge watching, but for gaming, and that’s been a part of gaming culture for a long time… So I try to think about building some kind of timeline or historical narrative around how we got to be this way, and why, and… Now energy drinks are super-interesting. They’ve got all these nootropics and vitamins and supplements in them… They’re kind of being pitched as healthy, whereas they used to be pitched as junk food, and even that’s been a really fascinating kind of shift.

[01:02:23.29] Yeah, I wonder how far you went into the energy drink thing, because… I guess I’ve lived long enough to remember when they were junky, and now it’s like there’s this health aspect to it… And I don’t know anything about nootropics or any of this stuff. I just look at it and think “This seems like -” and because they’re so huge… I mean, there’s a new energy drink every day… They’re mostly differentiated by branding, and not much else, it doesn’t seem… And kids love them. And I’m thinking like “This seems like kind of a predatory industry”, where it’s like they’re – these aren’t good for you, and they’re addictive, and stuff, but it’s like “Hey, it’s fun. It’s healthy. It’s this.” Have you looked into the makeup of these energy drinks and what goes all into them, and stuff?

Yeah, I’m still kind of working through that, but I think you’re right. Most public health studies have shown that there are a lot of problems with these drinks. I think some of them have tried to cut out sugar and things like that, and replaced it with other things… But the health implications are certainly concerning, and worrisome in many ways. And what’s fascinating is how these industries have embedded themselves so deeply in media, whether it’s promotions, or going to conventions, or in-game kind of features and things… So it’s almost like the drink has become media in and of itself, and it’s another thing to be consumed. They pull influencers in to promote them… So it’s a massive industry that I think hasn’t been studied quite enough, so I’m excited to kind of explore a little more and see where that goes.

Some of their marketing teams are amazing, too. Red Bull’s marketing, for instance – and Red Bull’s been around for a long time, so they’re not one of these new ones… In fact, when I was younger, Red Bulls were all the rage, but there was no sort of illusion that it was good for you. It was just going to keep you up all – it’s going to give you wings, and you’re going to crash later, but you’re like “That’s alright, I’ve got to study. I’m going to hit the Red Bulls.” But man, some of the stuff Red Bull does… Just associate themselves with extreme sports, and sponsoring extreme athletes, and marketing in a way that’s really, really effective, and quality… So much so that sometimes I’m jealous of some of the stuff they come up with. Just ideas… It’s really cool.

So like that whole side of if your entire business is predicated on you being better at marketing and branding than everybody else, and that’s really where like the battleground is for consumer sales… You can produce some really good marketing campaigns, right? Like, that just brings out some amazing stuff.

Yeah, and I think it’s very interesting too that in some ways these drinks are becoming more akin to Gatorade, or kind of sports drinks, or they’re pitched that way, at least… And I think as we see the rise of e-sports and things like that, it becomes associated with the idea of endurance, and performance, and you know, get that kind of edge… So that’s really implicit in the marketing, too; or explicit, I guess.

Yeah. You’re right, Jerod, Red Bull has done it well. There’s a big fascination, too. And you’ve kind of arrived if you’re sponsored by Red Bull. I pay attention to mountain biking, professional mountain biking. And there’s several folks I pay attention to that are in the game, and one of the YouTubers - he’s a YouTuber too, I suppose… But he shared his story of how 10 years ago it was a dream that he became a Red Bull rider, that he was sponsored by them. And he has been since, and how his life has changed. It’s almost like arriving; it’s like major leagues, but for this sort of like – it’s still a sport, but it’s this uniquely styled sport, where it’s extreme sports. Like skateboarding, or mountain biking, or maybe even snowboarding… I think there’s lots of different stuff around that, but that’s really wild how they’ve been able to use that marketing to entrench themselves.

[01:06:01.06] And now they even have Red Bull TV, where they literally are a media company, more so than just simply a drink company. They’ve transcended their original – it’s almost like Apple, where they kind of began as Apple computers, and now they’re just Apple, because it’s beyond the computer. They’ve transcended. And I suppose they’re also into music and films and stuff, too.

Yeah. Well, they’re just like culturally as relevant – they want to be as culturally relevant as possible, because then you associate going to a concert with Red Bull, going to go snowboarding with Red Bull. All these things just get associated implicitly with Red Bull, and it’s pretty smart.

What I find funny though is that these folks I see, they drink Red Bull, and I’m like “Well –” And I don’t know much about Red Bull, but I’m also in that camp where I don’t know much about the health benefits or lack thereof. And I’m thinking “Really? Do you really drink Red Bull that much?”

Well, that’s what’s interesting about the gamer side, because on the athletic side, especially with the history of these drinks being not good for you… I remember seeing – I don’t think it was Michael Jordan in particular, but like world-class athletes, and they’re trying to sell you Coca-Cola and Sprite. It’s like, I know you guys don’t drink that when you’re trying to train your body. And it’s the same thing with some of these energy drinks. But if you’re just trying to stay up all night and game, there’s this fast twitch… There’s an allure or an air of physicality to it, but really, you’re just sitting there pushing buttons. So you don’t have to be that in good a shape, so you can kind of buy it more… Destiny, or whoever it is, they drink this particular energy drink. You’re like “Yeah, I buy that”, because they’ve got to stay up all night. They don’t have to like run 100 meters in eight seconds.

But it is still extreme. It’s hardcore to stay up all night and press those buttons.

Exactly.

So hardcore.

[laughs] Oh, yeah… We’re bringing it back to buttons. So Rachel, have you seen the H2 commercial? I told Adam about this, the new Hummer that has the crab walk…

Oh, no. Tell me about that.

Oh, man. Go out and check out this commercial. You could use it as an advertisement for your power button book, because the entire thing is like energetic music, and… This is the Hummer that goes sideways. All four tires turn, so you can do the crab walk… And the whole thing is “Push the button.” And there’s like a whole song.

Oh, how have I not seen that? Oh, my gosh…

Yeah, you’ve got to go watch it.

That’s in my near future.

Yes.

It’s pretty catchy. Good advertising.

See, selling the button still works.

It certainly does. And then alongside your new book, what you could do is you could have like commemorative wipes, or something… [laughter] Some sort of cleaner that comes out with your book.

There you go.

I don’t know, if you just want free mark – we’re talking marketing.

I love it.

You know, like one of these things they get from Apple, where they just clean your screen off… Or chopsticks.

I want to do demonstrations where I just dunk the book in a big vat of water, and then just watch how people react. I think that’s going to really play it up.

That could go well.

Yeah.

And then sign it.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, I love it.

“Here you go. Here’s your wet book.”

Here’s your soggy book. Have a great day.

[laughs] “I can’t read it…” “I know!”

That’s the point.

That’s the issue.

You have to buy another one. You might have to buy another copy. Is there anything we didn’t talk about on these two subjects now, regarding buttons and cleanliness?

I feel like we covered a ton of stuff. No, I feel good.

So you mentioned a Twitch coming up for your future research… But what about a website? Where can people go to find all the details of your books, and your research, and future research?

Yeah, you can go to rachelplotnick.com, or you can find me at Indiana University. Either place, you’ll get to something to do with buttons, liquids… All the things.

All the things. And the Twitch is when again? January what?

January 31st. It’s at 2 p.m. Eastern. If you just search for “Rachel Plotnick and energy drinks”, it should come up and you can find the registration… It’s free, but we’d love to have some people join.

Who should attend that? Who’s that made for at this point?

Anybody. Anybody can attend. Yeah, it’s meant to be kind of academic light. So I’ll be talking about academic things, but meant for a general audience. So if you’re interested in energy drinks, come on by.

Very cool.

Thanks, Rachel.

Thank you so much. This was great.