Buttons and switches Continued from Page 7
Of course, launching a nuclear warhead can’t be accomplished by pressing a single button; there are a multitude of safeguards in place to prevent mass destruction. But Puskar’s point is that pushing a button has become so easy for humanity that we’ve perhaps forgotten the limits of our own power. People have come to rely on buttons to the point that there is an “enfeebling that happens alongside empowering,” Puskar said. The thermostat from our earlier example warms the house when Puskar presses a button, but only so long as the thermostat is working properly, or the furnace isn’t broken, or the power company is providing energy to his home. We’re only powerful as long as the button works when we press it. “That’s what we conceal from ourselves, behind the walls, down in the basement, and at the power plant,” Puskar said. “It feels like I raised the temperature one degree with the touch of my magic finger, because I no longer see the stack of wood or the people who cut it.” 4. It’s fun to push buttons. We’ve been doing it since we were kids. One thing Puskar hopes his audience takes away is a greater sense of how buttons have become great equalizers – and the consequences of that equality. After all, everyone knows how to push a button, even children. One of the reasons that Puskar was inspired to write this book was because his young children, like most kids their age, are button enthusiasts. “My wife used to take them out to the car for ‘Button Day,’ and they got to push and switch and do whatever they wanted until they were exhausted,” Puskar joked. But that started him thinking about how pressing buttons and flipping switches has widespread appeal for children. In fact, pushing buttons is a formative experience for all humans. Most of us knew how to press a button before we could even speak as infants. But that makes sense, Puskar argues. Children show they want things by pointing at them, and then an attentive mother will bring it to them. We push buttons with much the same gesture, by pointing with our finger and pressing. And lo and behold, an attentive motherboard brings us what we want. The Switch: An Off and on History of Digital Humans is available on Amazon, through the University of Minnesota Press, at Boswell Books, and other booksellers. By Sarah Vickery, College of Letters & Science 8 • IN FOCUS • January, 2024
Cross-knit across researches ancien What you need to know: •
Grad student Katie Cianciola studies ancient textiles. For her thesis, she examined fabrics from the Milwaukee Public Museum’s Nazca collection.
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The Nazca civilization is known for a unique crafting technique called crossknit looping.
Nearly 2,000 years ago, the Nazca people lived on the southern coast of Peru, close to the shore of the ocean on one side and bordered by a desert on the other. They were a farming people who relied on agriculture and sophisticated irrigation techniques to help their civilization thrive. They were also skilled potters and weavers, creating beautiful fabrics with intricate decorations. It’s those fabrics that Katie Cianciola is interested in. “I’m interested in textiles, specifically … and what those can tells us about the culture that made them, whether it’s through the symbolism in (the designs) or the craftsmanship and what makes that unique,” Cianciola explained. Cianciola graduated in from UW-Milwaukee in December with a Master’s degree in anthropology and a certificate in Museum Studies. For her thesis work, she studied fragments of fabric left behind from the Nazca, scraps that are literally thousands of years old. She is working with the Milwaukee Public Museum to analyze their Peruvian textiles collection, an involved process that includes studying the cloth to learn more about its designs and how it was made; determining where the artifact came from and how it arrived at the Museum; and making inferences about the Nazca people based on the remnants they left behind. On any given day, Cianciola may be counting the number of stitches in a swath of cloth or trying to fit scraps together like puzzle pieces so she can guess how the fragments may have been associated with one another. She’s also looking at the bigger picture: Where did the garments come from, and how were they used? Were they clothing for funerals or ceremonies? Or were they worn every day? The answers to these questions are important, said Cianciola, and not just for knitting or textile nerds like
