COLUMN: Pushing all the right buttons
We live in a day and age that has no tolerance for waiting. We have no patience for down time. We must keep moving at all times.
The ironic thing about this is we are sometimes so impatient to get from one place to another that we will commit ourselves to worthless tasks, as if they might speed up the process.
A good indicator of this is pushing buttons more than the necessary one time.
Do you think button manufacturers have designed buttons so that they will perform their job only after multiple pushes? Of course not, but people still can’t seem to be appeased with pushing the button once.
In case you don’t believe me, I have a couple of examples of this very concept.
At most busy crosswalks, you can find a pedestrian crosswalk button, which is used to get the light to change. Now, as most of you know, the light does not immediately change with the first push of the button. Yet, instead of being capable of waiting patiently, the pedestrian, almost without fail, will push the button one, two or possibly 300 more times before the stoplight finally changes and the pedestrian can cross.
Button pushers might defend their stance by saying that the light wouldn’t have changed without the quick-fire, button pushing. Though I had my own suspicions, I decided to get down to the real truth.
After some tedious research (a couple minutes), Reza Roozitalab, a representative from the McCain Traffic company, answered my question by saying that, “A stoplight will not change any quicker because of the amount of times or number of times you push the crosswalk button.”
Well, that settles that.
But what about other machines that react to button-pushing? You may argue that an elevator will, in fact, come quicker in direct relation to the amount of times you push the button (as we’ve seen many people attempt), but what’s the real truth?
According to Scott Allen from the Nationwide Lifts elevator company, “Yes, the faster you push [the button], the faster it will travel.” This was, of course shocking news to me, until on the next line he said, “No, just kidding. The answer is no.”
I’m glad to see that the elevator guys have a sense of humor. That’s probably good in a business that has its ups and downs (sorry for the pun, but you have to admit that it was unavoidable).
Though these examples are very convincing, you’re probably saying that these two button-pushing incidences could simply be coincidences. In that case, do you think clicking the mouse a bunch of times when your computer is frozen will defreeze it any faster?
Our local computer company, TDA Computer Solutions says, “No. If anything it would slow things down more.”
Now if you are thinking that I’m trying to take the angle of embarrassing all of you overzealous button-pushers out there, then you have grossly misunderstood my motives. The point of these examples I have given is to demonstrate the disappointing limits of our technology. Because of this, I figure we need set the bar high now on button effectiveness, so that technology will be forced to catch up to it. In other words, we should make it so the next time you push a pedestrian crosswalk button, the stoplight changes immediately, even with cars in mid-intersection if needs be.
If you push an elevator button, those doors should open up right away, whether the elevator is there or not.
If your computer is frozen, any extra clicking you perform should amount to something, such as, at the very least, causing the computer to spontaneously burst into flames.
We live in too busy a society to have to wait for something longer than is necessary, and though we may not have invented the one button to fix all our problems, this new attitude of no tolerance for slow-responding buttons will put us well on our way.
Until then, stop reading this column – you don’t have time for it – and if I’ve pushed anyone’s buttons the wrong way with what I’ve
said, well then, that was kind of the point.
Marty Reeder is a senior majoring in history education. Comments expecting a response should be sent numerous times to martr@cc.usu.edu