"A collection of more than 2,000 colorful and artistic pin-back buttons, forming a people's history of American culture and politics that focuses on a range of subjects: advertising, arts and entertainment, historical events, movements and causes, humor, nature, celebrated personalities and organizations, geographical features, sports, transportation, wars and anti-war movements"--

Push a button and turn on the television; tap a button and get a ride; click a button and “like” something. The touch of a finger can set an appliance, a car, or a system in motion, even if the user doesn't understand the underlying mechanisms or algorithms. How did buttons become so ubiquitous? Why do people love them, loathe them, and fear them? In Power Button, Rachel Plotnick traces the origins of today's push-button society by examining how buttons have been made, distributed, used, rejected, and refashioned throughout history. Focusing on the period between 1880 and 1925, when “technologies of the hand” proliferated (including typewriters, telegraphs, and fingerprinting), Plotnick describes the ways that button pushing became a means for digital command, which promised effortless, discreet, and fool-proof control. Emphasizing the doubly digital nature of button pushing—as an act of the finger and a binary activity (on/off, up/down)—Plotnick suggests that the tenets of precomputational digital command anticipate contemporary ideas of computer users. Plotnick discusses the uses of early push buttons to call servants, and the growing tensions between those who work with their hands and those who command with their fingers; automation as “automagic,” enabling command at a distance; instant gratification, and the victory of light over darkness; and early twentieth-century imaginings of a future push-button culture. Push buttons, Plotnick tells us, have demonstrated remarkable staying power, despite efforts to cast button pushers as lazy, privileged, and even dangerous.

Power BI Data Analysis and Visualization provides a roadmap to vendor choices and highlights why Microsoft's Power BI is a very viable, cost effective option for data visualization. The book covers the fundamentals and most commonly used features of Power BI, but also includes an in-depth discussion of advanced Power BI features such as natural language queries; embedding Power BI dashboards; and live streaming data. It discusses real solutions to extract data from the ERP application, Microsoft Dynamics CRM, and also offers ways to host the Power BI Dashboard as an Azure application, extracting data from popular data sources like Microsoft SQL Server and open-source PostgreSQL. Authored by Microsoft experts, this book uses real-world coding samples and screenshots to spotlight how to create reports, embed them in a webpage, view them across multiple platforms, and more. Business owners, IT professionals, data scientists, and analysts will benefit from this thorough presentation of Power BI and its functions.

IT Essentials v6 Companion Guide supports the Cisco Networking Academy IT Essentials version 6 course. The course is designed for Cisco Networking Academy students who want to pursue careers in IT and learn how computers work, how to assemble computers, and how to safely and securely troubleshoot hardware and software issues. As CompTIA Approved Quality Content, the course also helps you prepare for the CompTIA A+ certification exams 220-901 and 220-902. Students must pass both exams to earn the CompTIA A+ certification. The features of the Companion Guide are designed to help you study and succeed in this course: Chapter objectives–Review core concepts by answering the focus questions listed at the beginning of each chapter. Key terms–Refer to the updated lists of networking vocabulary introduced, and turn to the highlighted terms in context. Course section numbering–Follow along with the course heading numbers to easily jump online to complete labs, activities, and quizzes referred to within the text. Check Your Understanding Questions and Answer Key–Evaluate your readiness with the updated end-of-chapter questions that match the style of questions you see on the online course quizzes. This icon in the Companion Guide indicates when there is a hands-on Lab to do. All the Labs from the course are compiled and published in the separate book, IT Essentials v6 Lab Manual. Practicing and performing all these tasks will reinforce the concepts and help you become a successful PC technician.