>They wondered if such devices would seal off the wonders of technology into a black box: “effortless, opaque, and therefore unquestioned by consumers.”
rings true to me. I think this was and still is a valid concern. At the very least it's a real trade-off. I almost get the feeling that the author in the OP looks down on the knowledge needed to understand machines/technology since it can be replaced by a button. That misses the point entirely though. Taking technology for granted makes you a mindless consumer in my opinion. That's why we're so instinctively disgusted by the population in The Machine Stops. They don't exist in any real sense; they're just the exit nodes of the machine's functions.
The article treats skepticism of buttons as some quaint silly thing when it was part of a general criticism of technological society that carried over to the present day and made some valid point. And I don't, by far, embrace the critique of technology but one should indeed take seriously the "criticism of a push-button society".
The Machine Stops by E.M. Forster (written in 1909) has a lot of buttons. The novella is an indication that they were more of a symbol than the real source of the anxiety. It was caused by anticipation of things like:
- Disconnect of people from nature an each other.
- Replacement of real things with simulacra, which then begins to be perceived as the real thing.
- Mounting, yet fragile complexity of systems people interact with (initially) and within (eventually).
Looking at our society today, it's pretty clear that none of these fears were irrational.