Do you carry over 100 buttons?

Buttons have integrated themselves into our daily lives. But how much? Count how many buttons you touch daily. At home, in your car, at work, in the elevator. Or even better, count how many buttons you carry around with you at all times. You provide rides for buttons. You are a push-button car.

This is one reason why I find this topic so fascinating. We didn’t always carry around buttons. This trend started slowly and picked up steam. It changes how we live and interact with each other. Counting the number of buttons we carry is merely an indicator of how prevalent this trend has become.

Got a cell phone? Since you are reading this site, you probably do. That’s about 25 buttons.

Addicted to Blackberry? You have about 40 buttons. And a wheel attached to your thumb.

How about a newer car? You may have a key fob with 3 or 4 buttons.

Carry around a laptop? Ignoring for the moment whether they are buttons or keys (a subject for a later post), you carry around 80 more buttons.

iPod? Other music player? (And that sums up that industry.) Five to 10 more buttons.

Love to take photos with your digital camera and then put them up on Flickr? Add another 10 to 12 buttons.

Flashlight on your keychain? Pager? Tamagotchi? GameBoy?

So if you are the typical tech warrior, armed with a cell phone or Blackberry, a laptop, a music player, and maybe a digital camera, you carry around about 125 buttons on a daily basis.

We love access to action and information. The more buttons, the more we can do. But is there a limit? Is it feasible to carry around 500 buttons? What happens next? Do we limit our access to action and information? Do we make buttons even smaller, too small to push? Do we combine devices into crazy Frankensteins that do everything, but none of them well? Do we evolve to touch/pen or gesture based technologies? Brain implants?

The next five years should reveal some fascinating answers.

Count up your daily buttons and let me know!