A typist’s obsession with the perfect keyboard

March 09, 2021

I own 15 different keyboards.

In this number I don’t count the ones I have that are connected to laptops. Nor all the ones I’ve thrown away over the years. Among my collection are 5 mechanical keyboards, which I’ve revamped many times since purchasing them with specialty keycaps and o-ring sound dampeners. Like any hobby, this one can be more expensive than I’m comfortable trying to justify. I mean, I certainly don’t use all of them, and some of them I’ve really only used once or twice.

Believe it or not: I am prone to worrying that I’ll run out. That I’ll have a great story or program or email to write and I’ll find myself without the proper keyboard to do so. This is, of course, a baseless fear. There’s always a computer or bloc of paper and pens lying around, there’s always my phone. I’ve never found myself in a situation where I didn’t have some material to jot down an idea or a draft, and the day I do, if whatever it is is important enough, I’ll probably remember it later.

Thanks to the internet, I know there are a lot of people out there who share my obsession with keyboards. Most of them really only use mechanical keyboards, but some of them, like myself, are open to any kind.

Why the keyboard, though? Why not the screen? Or the the mouse, or the processor, or any part of the puzzle that makes up the modern computer?

This is a question that no one asks me. Because frankly, no one cares about my stupid keyboard collection.

But sometimes, in my head, I imagine that someone would ask. And this is what I’d tell them.

We spend a lot of time engaged with computers. Whether it be the phone, the work computer, the personal laptop, the gaming console: these devices suck up a lot of our time. As engrossed as we can be in the applications that run our messaging, our productivity tools, our games, our documents, we are always aware of this basic fact: they are a digital process with which we are provided a window, but remains a jumble of electronic operations that support abstraction. We interact with them in a way not too far removed from the way we interact with each other: through language. And language has rhythm, language derives from formulations that we are taught from an early age to express physically, with enunciations, with vocal chords, with tone and breathing, with volume and gestures and modulation. language may be made up of symbols, but language manifests itself in ways that can be felt.

Only the keyboard and mouse make the interaction between the mind and the computer physically manifest. And the mouse is a terribly dumb device. An awkward mass, that you scrape along a smooth surface until its position corresponds to a actionable point on a screen, often overstepping it and having to come back, and then clicking, bringing a weary end to a short but painful voyage.

The keyboard, on the other hand, engages us to the height of our tactility. Do you have 10 fingers (I only have 9 and a half because of a boyhood accident)? You can use all of them, sometimes simultaneously, and the more proficient you are or become at entering input, the faster the computer is made aware of your expression, the closer the link that you form with the production of sequences of letters that make up digital expression, the human place within the processes that the computer uses to resolve the mathematics of a set of constraints resulting in the production of a document, the sending of an email, the finishing up of the last level of a game, the compilation of a block of code.

If this all sounds like a religious manifest, well, to me it is. It’s not a religious conviction that has led me to prize a good keyboard, rather it’s my obsession with keyboards that has revealed to me how I ascribe to the act of writing some transcendant value. To me, a written thought has intrinsic value that exists independently of whether any human eye will ever witness it.

Though I don’t know for sure, I suspect that this is the case for many other people who invest a healthy chunk of their income on their keyboards.

The mechanical keyboard afficionados are all about the tactile and sonorous feedback from their input device. You should know the difference between a mechanical keyboard and a membrane or scissor-switch keyboard: when you press down on a key, it ativates midway through your finger travel: the keypress registers before your finger has finished its downward motion. This creates an immediacy to the input that feels more like a conversation with a friend who knows you well enough to finish your sentences than a stranger (membrane and swissor-switch keyboards) who would politely wait for you to finish before reacting to it.

And of course the sound, the ecstatic, satisfying clack of a keypress on a mechanical keyboard, that echoes the weight of your input and imbues it with the gravitas you ascribe to the thought that gave rise to it. Though some people swear that they’re faster on mechanical keyboards, many will admit that they are faster on their work laptops but that typing on a mechanical means typing with joy.

I myself am partial to scissor-switches to the same degree as with my mechanicals: I enjoy the subdued insectlike sound of chiclet typing as much as the fuller twang of a mechanical switch resonating within thick plastic keycaps. Nothing matches the looks of a mechanical, of course: the scupted keys with their mix of strict and flowing lines, the pretty lights. All those pretty, multicolor, blinking, breathing lights.

I’d say one comes to the keyboard as a tool for implementing the transmission of one’s thoughts, but thereafter comes to perceive the input as having its own finality. To me, every click serves a purpose, but also exists within a void, as an act of communication bolstered by its physical manifestation but never contained by it. If I enjoy a book or an article, I’d also like to see the keyboard it was written on.

As is the case with any passion, ultimately I can’t explain it to any degree I’d find satisfying, but I do know that I can’t walk by a keyboard without typing on it, even when it’s not plugged into anything. I also know that, however many keyboards I may own, I’ll always be scouring the internet for a new design, a new material, a new type of switch, a new key layout, a new profile, a new color scheme.

I’ve tried foldable silicone, split ergonomic, collapsable, they all have their signature that brings its own rhythm and character to the typing experience. More recently I’ve been eyeing a honeycomb layout and, as I gaze at the pictures of the board or watch the unpacking videos, I try to imagine what it would feel like to be moving my fingers across its surface.

The quest for the perfect keyboard is unending, of course, because anyone who’s into keyboards never wants for it to end, never wants to believe that the keyboard being used is the ultimate design, that the flow can’t be taken to another level given the right device to channel it.

In a sense, it’s not about finding the keyboard that best suits human ergonomics: it’s about finding the keyboard that best embodies the spirit of the man-machine conversation, which has always been evolving and will continue to do so for some time. Every keyboard I own is a snapshot in time that bears witness to this evolution. So, as is the case with any collection, it’s a manifest of my personal history.

And if it’s silly, well, it’s my silly.