My Gadget 'Hell'
In which I demonstrate why I am an ad man's dream
What is wrong with me?!
Last week I was reading an article online which trumpeted the imminent launch of a phone. ‘Wow!’ I hear you say ‘not a phone? Don’t new ones come out every hour, on the hour these days?’ Well yes, but this one was different. It was highly rated…. and cheap too. Really cheap.
Anyway, one minute later I’d ordered it. It was £170, which is cheap for a phone, but still £170. Why did I do it? I already have a really good phone that’s less than a year old and does everything that a phone can do at this time. Why buy a slightly less good one, even for a lot less money?
I don’t know.
Welcome to my gadget hell. Now admittedly if gadgets are my hell I seem to be in the grip of something like Stockholm Syndrome because I am in love with the damned things. The hell is that it seems like I have an almost primeval urge to explore, to read about, to try out gadgets.
So, this week I have been wondering what in my past has given me this terrible affliction. After a day or so musing, a memory from long ago returned.
It was the memory of what was easily the best toy I ever had.
I was about 7 and I was rootling about in my dad’s toolbox in the garage, as a small boy will do when trying to find an unusual way to cause himself a bodily injury. I came across a small stock of switches. Now Dad trained as an electrical engineer, so he had some interesting stuff in that box…. and the switches especially spoke to me
There were 6 separate toggle switches, all of them identical. I flicked them on and off. They had a completely perfect action, firm, but easy to select with a deliberate movement of an index finger. I appropriated them in a flash and took them up to my bedroom, where I looked around for something on which to mount them. The 6”x 6” plywood lid of a travelling chess set? Perfect!
It was with me the work of a moment to rip off the picture of a boy and girl studiously (and boringly) considering their next move, leaving a plain black wooden surface. I got out my penknife (Yes of course I had a penknife at seven – every boy had one at that age in those days … it was a law I think.) and opened up six holes, evenly spaced in the lid, then secured the switches with their … securing ring?
And there I had a perfect tool for every superhero game, every fighter pilot scenario, every James Bond fantasy sequence. I could flick the switches to engage the afterburners on Thunderbird 2, to fire the missiles on my Lightning interceptor, to explode the bombs I’d hidden under the chair of Mrs Smith, my nemesis at primary school.
This also explains at least partly why I love rewatching the unsurpassably brilliant black comedy Dr Strangelove.
You will recall as the B52 reaches the last stages of its bomb run, the electronics engineer (A very young James Earl Jones) flicks the (toggle) switch to open the bomb doors.
“Uh Captain, Bomb Doors are Negative Function”
He flicks the switch off and on several times, we see the “BOMB DOORS CLOSED” light remain on….
“Still negative function”
“Engage emergency power” says pilot Slim Pickens
Switches are flicked
“Still negative function”
“Fire the Teleflex bolts”
“Firing the Teleflex bolts”
More switch action.
“Uh ….Still negative function”
Etc. etc.
I realise now that that dialogue is a very close approximation of what I would be saying inside my 7-year-old head as I flicked those switches on that chess box lid.
What a toy!
From this root I am sure the branch of my gadget addiction has grown. I still love flicking a switch on a well-designed, preferably chromed, item. From Coffee machines to Mercedes Benz dashboards. It’s an addiction and I’m not sure I want a cure for if I’m honest, even if my bank manager does.
Those switches still speak to me today and I know I’m not alone in this. More pertinently so do the designers of our consumer devices. For example, you only had to see the dashboard of the relaunched Mini in 2006 to appreciate what I mean. Sitting in the middle of the dash, nestling under the trademark single dial, my childhood switches are perfectly reproduced. I have no desire to own a Mini per se, but by God I have a huge wish to throw some of those switches.
Bravo Mini!
And finally, returning to the cheap phone I mentioned at the start I can see now why it has a greater appeal that your standard run of the mill, black rectangle. Yes it’s slim and yes it’s black too. But it has some exposed screws on the back as well, with some sharp edges and a metal scroll wheel in one corner. It looks more utilitarian…. It looks like there may even be a switch behind the back cover.
I think I may need help….. Also, please don’t ask me about cameras.