Buttons Made People “Lazy”

As electric push buttons spread in the late 1800s, people suddenly found themselves activating doorbells, intercoms, and elevators without touching the machinery behind them. Critics were worried the button would make human skills atrophy by turning technology into a sealed “black box” that consumers stopped questioning. By 1916, one educator even complained that pushing a button seemed to remove any sense of responsibility for what happened behind it.

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