Word: pushbutton
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...Newest symptom of pushbutton living is the Feller-Matic Insect Control Unit, which is said to be death on flying varmints, harmless to people, pets, wildlife and vegetation. A network of copper or plastic pipe is laid around the garden, patio or swimming pool, with nozzles set inconspicuously at intervals. The plumbing is connected to a tank of water-base Pyraid insecticide; when the owner flicks a switch, a pump jets the lethal mist over the area. A two-minute spray is effective for about half a day, gives off a pleasant lemon odor. The device is made by Feller...
...Whiz Kid lingo is taken as stupidity. The best of the old soldiers long ago tried to get sophisticated themselves in developing and using the advanced weapons, and planning the strategy and tactics of modern warfare. These men think that they will be the ones who, even in a pushbutton war, will have to do the fighting, and that the military tradition they are imbued with-of courage, stubbornness, independence, imagination, and self-respect-will be required of them and those who serve under them. All this, they believe, the new young men regard too lightly...
...down the sheer glass wall-to-wall windows of Manhattan's new skyscrapers, sealed eternally shut to keep conditioned air within, creep caged steel scaffolds, hung from cables and grooved to the buildings' ribs. Controlled by pushbutton, equipped with telephone, they are manned by a squad of window washers plying sponge and squeegee with a freedom and speed unknown to their brothers of the old-fashioned safety belt. But now scaffolds have been grounded...
...luxury and gadgetry. Small runabouts with rakish lines, chrome fittings, and decorator-styled upholstery look more and more like cars, presumably to attract diffident womenfolk. Oceangoing yachts sport bulkhead-to-bulkhead carpeting and baby blue staterooms. New compact radar sets, depth-sounders and other electronic gear cram the cockpits. Pushbutton winches eliminate the need to "weigh" anchor. Hot-water heating, cold-water cooling, seawater evaporators and adapters for turning iceboxes into electric refrigerators lure the boat owner. Apparently it takes a heap of gadgets to make a boat a home...
...abolish much of the dirty and drudge work-the tedious, boring jobs that proliferated after Henry Ford's assembly lines in 1913 began to replace craftsmanship with mass assembly. In steel mills and chemical plants, yesterday's blue-collar worker now wears white overalls, sits at a pushbutton panel as massive as a cathedral organ, and takes home a technician's fat pay envelope. What computers did for clerks was to eliminate the menial paper shuffling, permitting people to spend their energies on more creative and profitable work. It could well be that computers are propelling...