I find it amusing how often people use the word “punch” to refer to inputting data, or just typing it on a keyboard. I guess the thought is that it comes from the act of “punching” keys. However for decades data was punched, and this referred to the act of punching holes in cards. A card punch was the machine upon which you wrote your programs and entered your data. I spent the first two years of my degree writing class assignments on IBM card punch machines. Mostly on these. Still have a card deck from one of them somewhere.
“Dial” will probably fall into disuse once mobile phones stop using the word entirely. My HTC phone has “Call” and “End Call” buttons, but still uses “dial” here and there, like “smart dial.”
ETA: which makes me think of something else- with the prevalence of touch screens on mobile devices, how long will it be before we stop calling them “buttons?”
A “button” is a type of control where you push it to change from the off to the on state. Whether it’s a physical button, an on-screen button you “push” with a mouse, or a touchscreen area you push with a fingertip, what matters is what it does, not what technical mechanism it’s built out of.
Yes, we could call it a “momentary bi-modal activator control”, but “button” seems catchier & more likely to stick with the non-technical public.
I don’t think “roll down” is anachronistic. Car windows do, in fact, roll down.
Also I think “dial” has referred to buttons for a long time. What about the saying “don’t touch that dial”, meaning don’t change the channel? I’ve never seen a remote (or clicker, if you prefer) with rotary control.
there have been after market remotes with a channel selector dial.
I always assumed that “Put a sock in it” referred to a person’s mouth. You’re going to be able to put socks in those for years to come.
Interestingly, in the same forum on this message “board” there is a thread asking How to read a stock ticker. Obviously the stock quote “crawl” that appears on the bottom of the TV screen is silent, but the “ticker” notation goes back to the days when mechanical stock recorders marked unrolling paper tapes while making a ticking noise.
It is a sadly diminished world in which we now live. Uncle Cecil reviewed the joys of audio channel changers in: Can playing with a Slinky change the channels on your TV set?
I’m 42 and I didn’t hear the term clicker until I was in college and visited a classmate at home where he had an old TV with an actual clicker.
No, the remotes we’re talking about literally clicked. There was no electronic component like a chime. When you pressed the lever you Could feel the physical friction of the lever pressing down on a flexible material that resulted in a snap and an actual click.
there are likely multiple remote types being talked about here.
there were early remotes that were a mechanical chime like a doorbell or xylophone.
electronic device (like calculators or remotes) have buttons which spring back with a plastic spring or blister which make a click when that happens which is what i mentioned as a clicker.
In the aforementioned Can playing with a Slinky change the channels on your TV set?, Cecil states that “Typically these devices worked by striking a series of metal bars with a tiny hammer. There was usually an audible click, but the frequencies that actually did the job were inaudible harmonics.”
having been exposed to only a couple of them some decades ago my memory is fuzzy. i recall more of a thunk than a click.
the electronic ones did have buttons that clicked. i never heard of the term ‘clicker’ until the electronic ones.
What about speed dial?
Wait.
When he uses the << button on DVD/Blu-ray remote, what does he call it? We say, “Oooh, rewind that. I want to see it again.” What does he say? Go back?
And redial buttons seem here to stay.
From my view, now that we have phones with directories/contacts, speed dial is already obsolete. I haven’t heard anyone use the term in a while.
But wouldn’t the phrase refer to the channel knob on the set? I think it would predate remote controls of any kind except using the kids to change the channel 
Also, windows roll down because the handle is doing the roll. An electric window lowers or raises.
My parents are very strange people we actually didn’t get rid of our dial telephone until after we had the internet in our house (circa early nineties, we had a mainframe terminal in our house). Infact up until the around 1991 or so I was still using our old black and white TV which had an old-fashioned circular tuning dial on it to play my ZX Spectrum. We also had a home computer before we had a colour TV.
The window rises. Actually I hear open and close more often. But still, even in an electric window, there is some part of the mechanism that is rolling.
That reminds me – when I was a kid and asked my dad why our car didn’t have electric windows, he said that they’re dangerous because if you drive into a lake the electric mechanism can jam, trapping you inside. Now of course I know that can happen with a manual window too because of the water pressure.
My point was simple - I think rewind will die.
What’s your’s?
No way. I use the speed dial on my phone all the time (I only have to hold down the #5 to dial my girlfriend. And most phones have #1 set to voicemail). It’s way faster than going into the contact list, scrolling down to find the person’s name (or having to type in their name to search) and then calling. Although I’m not really sure if they have developed a new name for it now other than “speed dial”.