It’s fair to say that I care about switches more than most people. As long as it turns the thing on and off, what does it matter? My friends, it matters a great deal. Power switches are commands. They are points of contact (literally, in a circuit – or at least they used to be, but I’ll get to that). They are bridges between worlds; they are the most fundamental connection between the human world and the electronic one. They bring the electronic world to life.
Personally, I think that bringing an entire universe to life ought to feel good. It ought to feel momentous! At the very least, it should be something that you can only do intentionally, and you should know when you’ve done it. The platonic ideal of powering up a piece of electronic equipment, for me, is the levered switch on an old hi-fi amplifier, maybe a Sansui from the late 70s: a delicately weighted, short-throw lever that flicks into place with a low hum and a little wake-up kick from the woofers so low-frequency you can barely hear it. It’s electronics, it’s just current in wires, but it’s also physical – an action you can hear and touch and feel.
But at some point, consumer electronics design took a different course. It was decided that everything should be frictionless and virtual, and you would bring your devices to life just by brushing a smooth surface lightly with a fingertip. This was a different vision of the connection between person and machine that also hinted at a new reality – that the machine was never really off, it was always on standby, waiting. You couldn’t break the circuit. (Well, maybe you could if you held your finger on that spot for three eternal seconds.)