Part of a series: B-List Holy Grails

A technology can be as much a gadget or gizmo as it can be a change in systemic behaviour. In that regard, I would suggest that the condensing & specialization of work resulting in push-button jobs like George Jetson’s promised an easing of the harshness of labor. Yet, they simply fill a man top-full and brimming with ennui & alienation. I have worked jobs where I did nothing more than push a button every few minutes, and it is nowhere near as pleasant as I thought it would be.

Written by: Brandon L. Keene

Ryan:
A great entry, but I couldn’t think of very many jobs that were actually push-button jobs. There’s tons of data entry jobs, and keyboards are a SERIES of buttons, but that’s not really the Jetson’s future we’re talking about. There are factory-line jobs where your only task is to be a pair of human eyes, knocking bad items off the line — that’s pretty close, I guess! It just needs a big red button and a robot maid and we are THERE.

Poster Child:
I’ve never had a “push button” job, but I can imagine that it’s not a lot of fun. Many of my crappier jobs could be described as pushing a series of buttons, in particular orders. Still not fun. How much complexity to we need for job satisfaction?

Tim:
Lest you dismiss the judges’ comments as signs that they are hopelessly out of touch with the plight of the working person, let me point out that even in the Jetsons, the push button job was played for laughs, in that George HATED his job. And who can blame him?

What's this all about?

In the waning days of 2009, Julian Dibbell mentioned videophones as a holy grail technology that ended up being a b-teamer. I liked the concept so much that I ran a contest on Quiet Babylon, looking for more examples.

This is one of the shortlist finalists as chosen by a panel of judges consisting of myself, Ryan North of Dinosaur Comics & Project Wonderful and street artist Poster Child.

All of: B-List Holy Grails