The Next Step

I admit, for most of my life I have kind of had a thing for real, physical buttons. As a kid, buttons were an integral part of my life. Whether it was to send a hot wheels car barreling down the stairs or a Lego person to an early grave, buttons made it happen. If you needed a princess saved or Play-Doh french fries, buttons got the job done. Unfortunately, the end has been a long time coming for my springy friends. I probably should have seen it coming with the very first touch screen.

Perhaps our society simply loved buttons too much. We flaunted our love in public with cell phones and CD players. We shared private, emotional moments in front of the television, and financial troubles at the ATM. Buttons have been my playmate, co-pilot, accountant, secretary, adviser, and friend.

And yet we are nearing what looks like the end for the button and, ironically, it seems to be Nintendo leading the way. The DS’s touch screen pulled away from the traditional model of the handheld system with heavy button use, leaving some games to use no buttons at all. The Wii was even worse, having a controller which had fewer buttons than its predecessor and which was clearly designed to discourage their use. But buttons were not gone yet. They still had a part to play in our lives, but it had become an empty, meaningless relationship. Even mashing had lost its appeal, though none of us dared admit it.

And now there is the iPhone. Let’s face it, the thing is gorgeous. It is sleek and young, and the buttons are just too old to compete. Their wrinkles are starting to show and the men don’t check them out on the subway anymore. No, in fact, it is the lack of buttons that attracts us now, so ubiquitous have they become. A device with no buttons? How could it be? Without even knowing what it is, we are immediately curious and excited.

Alas, the Wiis and iPhones of this world will only increase in number, and I don’t know if I can resist them forever. So buttons, I want you to know, even if perhaps you are not as perky as you once were, even if the grime has been ground into you to the point that it will never come out, even if you occasionally get stuck, there will always be a special place for you in my heart.

I try to make a habit of Googling myself every so often to see where I rank in the vast expanse of the web. In the process of trying to find myself among the armies of Nathan Palmers out there, I noticed some eerie parallels between myself and the first few people with the same name as me. My curiosity piqued, I decided to check out, er, research the kind of people who have the name “Nathan Palmer.”

Nathan Palmer, Lecturer, Colorado School of Mines: This alter ego shares my poor design skills, and teaches Advanced Engineering Math in the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science. He has degrees in theoretical and engineering physics. I can’t say I am in this guy’s league (yet?), but I do have a fascination with physics and an aptitude for math.

Nathan Palmer, Software Engineer: He is 27 and, from reading his blog posts, is pretty much “future me.” He doesn’t offer a lot of personal information except what comes out of the blog posts.

Nathan Palmer, Ph.D. Student at MIT: He does research “focused on applying mathematical models to various problems in structural proteomics, transcriptomics, and experimental design” in the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at MIT.

Nathan Palmer, Barrister:

Nathan has a particular expertise in cases causing death by dangerous driving, driving without due care and attention whilst over the prescribed limited resulting in death by death and related matters.

“Death by death”?

Nathan Palmer, Treasury Manager, Retirement Investments: Works at Intel and has experience managing what is likely to be vast quantities of money.

Nathan Palmer, Tree Climber: Do you know how depressing it is to have the Google Results for your entire site below a single picture of a guy climbing a tree? Yeah, me too.

Nathan Palmer, United States Army: This man’s son died trying to complete a Ranger training program. He is quoted several times in this article on the web site for the Arlington National Cemetary.

(My old Northeastern page actually appears after the Army Nathan)

Nathan Palmer, Realtor:  Okay, up until now I have been OK with being below everybody on this list (except maybe tree climber guy). But this realtor from New Hampshire clearly belongs to the “maximal animated GIF” school of web design. At least my old page found its way up above him. Hopefully my new one will reach those heights soon.

Nathan Palmer, Wide Receiver: The scouts give him two stars!

Nathan Palmer, UMass Lowell Master’s student: He is also a co-developer of The Virtual Cricket. Despite what the page says, The Virtual Cricket does not really emulate an actual cricket. Unless by “cricket” you mean some kind of robot board.

After this you start to get into repeats and random mentions of Nathan Palmers with no details. And if you go to the fourth page, beyond the clearly crappy results, you will find my one true site. With any luck I will be moving up that list.