Finger on the Button: Agency at the Binary Switch

Jason Puskar (UW-Milwaukee) presents part of his research on the cultural and political history of the pushbutton, a device that scarcely existed before the mid-nineteenth century, but that has proliferated ever since. The talk will focus on the important role the button has played in twentieth-century philosophies of agency, and by extension, on the importance of binary switching to liberal conceptions of individual free will.