1991: "Push-button Death"

J.G. Ballard wrote “Push-button Death” in 1991 for an anthology on Vietnam and was republished in A User’s Guide to the Millennium.

Was there a Gulf War? … After the arcade video-game of the bombing campaign, the ‘100 hours’ of ground fighting, filtered through the military and TV censors, were scarcely enough to root the reality of the war in our minds. Push-button death is a game with few risks, at least to the television viewer… The absence of combatants, let alone the dead and wounded, suppresses any reflexes of pity or outrage, and creates the barely conscious impression that the entire war was a vast demolition derby in which almost no one was hurt and which might even have been fun.

Not all buttons are fun.

War is an area where push-button simplification of technology has not treated us humans very well. We can depersonalize our actions, never see the results, push the button from a distance. When you use a bayonet, you have to own your action. A gun, you gain some distance, but you’re still there, present at the results of your decision. Push-button missiles and other military toys, they’re just that, toys. It’s a video game at that point.

The flipside of automation is depersonalization. You can do more with a single button, but you are simultaneously removed from the action itself. Push a button to order and deliver a birthday present from Amazon? Easy, but it loses a little something in the process. Somebody else put the gift in the box. Somebody else wrapped it up. Somebody else delivered it.

Hmm.

I didn’t know JG Ballard would take me there.

Speaking of which, take care Kurt Vonnegut. Thanks for the simple message: “God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.”