I’m humming that famous song by The Weeknd right now: “Oh, the light’s blinding me! I can’t sleep because your stupid gadgets are lighting up the room in an incredibly obnoxious way. I want to strangle your designer.” Okay, so it doesn’t rhyme, but… Might be I made a second line. But that’s because it gives me a headache. And it is Because it was illuminated by the light of a gadget designed by a sadist.
Honestly, there are a lot of them out there — gadget makers won’t be satisfied until they’ve turned every home into a cheesy, neon-lit sci-fi set — but surely no product needs to shine a laser beam of light onto your retina just to prove it’s functional.
Assuming you can. In truth, no one knows what each light actually does. Maybe it’s to indicate that something is on. Or off. Or that it’s charging. Or that it’s charging. Or, because the design team had a budget at their disposal and corporate pride to satisfy, maybe it’s just to alert you to the presence of the gadget.
In a bad way
At the very least, the impact these gadgets have on your eyes is somewhat uneven. In my office alone, there are several unnecessary gadget lights competing for attention. The OWC Thunderbolt Hub is objectively a great product, but did it really need a giant blue glowing OWC logo that’s the brightest in sight? No, it didn’t. The Ruark speaker has an output LED, but I think it could have been turned on for a short time instead of leaving it on indefinitely and adding visual noise. And the RGB30 is a great handheld console, and it even has an eye-burning green “on” light in case you want a personal spotlight/laser beam while playing retro games.
Still, it’s nothing compared to what’s going on elsewhere. I have a few Anker chargers, and they all light up the entire room the moment I put my phone on the charging pad. The light tells me, “Look, it’s charging.” Yeah. Thanks. It’ll probably keep telling me unnecessarily, forever, “it’s still charging.” That’s nice. Good job. What if I just turned the light off? Needless to say, that didn’t happen. So I used duct tape to cover the light. Not the prettiest solution, but at least I could sleep.
Seeing the light
Horrifyingly, they weren’t the worst perpetrators in the dark. It was Alexa, who used to lurk in my bedroom. Only, for a change, its light was yellow. At least, it was most of the time. Because Amazon still sent notifications even when I told it not to, and the warning took the form of said light. The final push? I woke up in the middle of the night to see a strange pulsating yellow light coming from behind my curtains, and my sleep-dazed brain was momentarily convinced that aliens were plotting a silent invasion.
I get it. You might argue that devices need to show they’re healthy and functioning. But there’s a better way. Long ago, Apple invented a subtle “breathing” light on Macs to make the technology feel as if it was alive. But honestly, I’m perfectly happy if the technology just looks dead until you need it, and the lights stay off when you’re using it. And even Apple has joined the (evil) light club with the Apple TV, a stark light that lights up a runway and forces you to notice it. Maybe the next iteration of Apple’s little black box will include a little black light setup. At the very least, that’s a gadget light I can get behind.