Amazon’s Dash Buttons Hint at a Future of Interface-Free Shopping

Last Friday, 16 Larabars and an 80-count box of Glad garbage bags arrived at my door. These items are unremarkable, except for this: I ordered them by pressing some buttons on or near my kitchen countertop. Online shopping — or we’ll-certainly-need-this-for-the-apocalypse impulse shopping — can now be done with a light press on a small, plastic “Buy Me!” dongle made by Amazon.

There are a couple different ways to look at Amazon’s Dash Buttons. The first, and most obvious, is that they are a gimmick. But these buy buttons also support a shopping experience that involves almost zero interaction, whether that means browsing store shelves (IRL!) or tapping a touchscreen to browse and buy virtually.

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This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

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