The Switch
University of Minnesota Press (Verlag)
978-1-5179-1540-7 (ISBN)
The Switch traces the sudden rise of a technology that has transformed everyday life for billions of people: the binary switch. By chronicling the rapid growth of binary switching since the mid-nineteenth century, Jason Puskar contends that there is no human activity as common today as pushing a button or flipping a switch—the deceptively simple act of turning something on or off. More than a technical history, The Switch offers a cultural and political analysis of how reducing so much human action to binary alternatives has profoundly reshaped modern society.
Analyzing this history, Puskar charts the rapid shift from analog to digital across a range of devices—keyboards, cameras, guns, light switches, computers, game controls, even the “nuclear button”—to understand how nineteenth-century techniques continue to influence today’s pervasive digital technologies. In contexts that include musical performance, finger counting, machine writing, voting methods, and immersive play, Puskar shows how the switch to switching led to radically new forms of action and thought.
The innovative analysis in The Switch makes clear that binary inputs have altered human agency by making choice instantaneous, effort minimal, and effects more far-reaching than ever. In the process, it concludes, switching also fosters forms of individualism that, though empowering for many, also preserve a legacy of inequality and even domination.
Jason Puskar is professor of English at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. He is author of Accident Society: Fiction, Collectivity, and the Production of Chance.
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Awake at the Switch
Part I. Start
1. Origin Stories
2. Designing the Button
3. Analogs and Analogies
Part II. Digital Bodies
4. The Point of Touch
5. Counting on the Body
6. Darth Vader’s Nipples
Part III. Keyboard Rationality
7. The Keyboard’s Checkered Past
8. Human Types
9. Chording and Coding
10. The Archaeology of Qwerty
Part IV. Objects of Play
11. The Toys of Dionysus
12. Pinball Wizards
Part V. Haptic Liberalism
13. The Control Panel of Democracy
14. Switching Philosophies
15. Pistolgraphs
16. First-Person Shooters
Epilogue: Self-Destruct
Notes
Index
| Erscheinungsdatum | 25.10.2023 |
|---|---|
| Zusatzinfo | 38 black and white illustrations |
| Verlagsort | Minnesota |
| Sprache | englisch |
| Maße | 178 x 229 mm |
| Gewicht | 680 g |
| Themenwelt | Kunst / Musik / Theater ► Design / Innenarchitektur / Mode |
| Kunst / Musik / Theater ► Kunstgeschichte / Kunststile | |
| Geschichte ► Teilgebiete der Geschichte ► Technikgeschichte | |
| Naturwissenschaften | |
| Sozialwissenschaften | |
| ISBN-10 | 1-5179-1540-6 / 1517915406 |
| ISBN-13 | 978-1-5179-1540-7 / 9781517915407 |
| Zustand | Neuware |
| Haben Sie eine Frage zum Produkt? |
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