Anything Button

Type: tree | Size: small | Origin: Planet Factory
COMPONENTS
Big Red Button
PROBLEM

Making a new thing means finding the place where making is allowed.

SOLUTION

The Anything Button is a small tree with one button on it. Press it wherever you are and it makes a new anything, right there. It is installed in lots of places, like the factory that makes segments, because the factory should not have to walk somewhere else to begin. The button feeds itself: every press produces, among other things, the next press.

components

A large, tactilely satisfying momentary pushbutton in red, mounted on a housing that communicates importance. The button is big because whatever it does is important. The color is red because the designer wanted you to know that. It has a satisfying click on actuation that makes the person pressing it feel briefly in control of something, which is the intended experience regardless of what actually happens next. Sometimes sticks in the closed position. When it sticks, whatever the button is responsible for either keeps happening or stops happening depending on which direction the stick went, and in either case nobody near the button is prepared for it. The button does not know it is stuck. The button does not know anything. It is a button. The chaos that follows is not the button's fault and the button has never claimed otherwise. Not to be confused with any other big red button. This is a component. It is a physical object. It ships in a box.

Inspect
Inputs
  • tree_anything_button
Outputs
  • forest_anything
  • forest_hats
  • forest_belts
  • forest_yard
  • forest_six_pack_o_humans
TREE
AVAILABLE INPUTS
AVAILABLE OUTPUTS
  • comp_onoff
Schema
                            {
    "id": "tree_anything_button",
    "name": "Anything Button",
    "type": "tree",
    "inputs": [
        "tree_anything_button"
    ],
    "outputs": [
        "forest_anything",
        "forest_hats",
        "forest_belts",
        "forest_yard",
        "forest_six_pack_o_humans"
    ],
    "passthru": [],
    "children": [
        "comp_big_red_button"
    ],
    "extends": null,
    "belongs_to": [
        {
            "id": "planet_factory",
            "name": "Planet Factory",
            "type": "planet",
            "inputs": [],
            "outputs": [
                "comp_segment"
            ],
            "passthru": [],
            "children": [
                "intangible_human_robot_war",
                "intangible_time_warped",
                "tree_timecard",
                "comp_big_red_button",
                "tree_anything_button",
                "forest_anything"
            ],
            "tree": [],
            "extends": null,
            "belongs_to": [
                "galaxy_logistics"
            ],
            "problem": "Something has to make the things.",
            "description": "Planet Factory is the MTREES manufacturing layer \u2014 the part of the universe where raw materials, components, and subassemblies enter a process and emerge as things that can be shipped, attached, worn, mounted, strapped on, or stacked. Every tree in the MTREES ecosystem has a supply chain terminus and that terminus is here. The factory is not glamorous. The factory does not have a brand story. The factory has tolerances, shift schedules, a quality control checkpoint that is taken seriously by exactly the people whose job it is to take it seriously, and a loading dock that operates on its own timeline regardless of what the spreadsheet says. Planet Factory exists because enthusiasm and good design are not sufficient to produce a physical object. At some point someone has to make the thing. That is what this planet is for."
        }
    ],
    "template": "tree",
    "price": "0",
    "size": "small",
    "image": "comp_duct_tape",
    "problem": "Making a new thing means finding the place where making is allowed.",
    "description": "The Anything Button is a small tree with one button on it. Press it wherever you are and it makes a new anything, right there. It is installed in lots of places, like the factory that makes segments, because the factory should not have to walk somewhere else to begin. The button feeds itself: every press produces, among other things, the next press."
}

Universe Alpha