Edit: After seeing the image posted by @iruoy — https://i.imgur.com/OH3QTXQ.png — I have to disagree with you because the circle represents a zero (low voltage - FALSE) and the vertical line represents a one (high voltage - TRUE). If you studied computer science, logic, electrical engineering, or attended any basic course on electronics you would know that ones-and-zeroes are the written representation of an electric current, in fact, they are the basics of computing: Bits.
As the article mentions, the O was already in the unicode, it's definition was just updated, thus your font does already include it, while the I is a new symbol, and is too recent to be in your font and thus shown.
Yeah, the circle represents a zero - but it isn't a zeno, and the line represents a one - but it isn't a one. They're graphics that seem removed from the meanings they represent. Semantically they're removed too, since turning a device on seems to have complex, multi-byte significance.
And as graphics, the zero seems to represent "circuit connected" and the one seems to represent "circuit disconnected". Yet they have the exact opposite meanings!
I did an image search on a few search engines to make sure "on off switch" still returned the same ⏽/⭘ switches I've seen forever. Pretty sure the back of your printer probably has one.
Where are these switches uncommon? Where are they flipped to the opposite meaning as you described? Where has the circle ever represented a connected circuit? Most circuit diagrams are squared off, so which one was circular? I'm so confused.
It's clearly supposed to be a metaphor for genitalia - with the line suggesting 'presence', and the circle suggesting absence. (Note the latin 'vagina', literally means sheath). It works better in the case of the numeral 1, which even has a glans.
Whoever downvoted this was apparently offended by the association. However, there is insight in the point you raised, and you stated it intellectually - not in a juvenile sense, which was in the eye of the beholder.
In anthropology and psychology, primitive symbols like a vertical line or a circle are often found to represent the male and female dichotomy. In fact, it's quite prevalent cross-culturally as basics of a visual language. [citation needed]
I have always seen it this way too: a broken or completed circuit. But I've accepted that my initial understanding of the visual metaphor doesn't match its intent. I think misunderstandings like these result when we abandon written language to point and grunt at tiny pictures.
I've always looked at the line as a connection and the open circle as no connection. It's just what I came up with when I was young as a way to make sense of the markings.
Interesting. I always took ⭘ to be an open circuit and ⏽ to be a closed circuit, using the symbol for a switch as the rough guide. Perhaps they're poor symbols if people can look at them and come up with rational reasons for each interpretation to be correct.
To be extremely pedantic, I think they’re correct at an implementation level: for most chips, as long as they’re receiving power at all from a power supply, they’ll run, unless a reset line is being held high. In most consumer electronics, that reset line is held high by default (by power coming off the wall or from the battery), unless power is supplied to a NAND gate coming from (a flip-flop in front of) the power switch on the front of the computer.
To “turn on” a computer (using the push-button at the front, rather than by flipping a power-supply toggle-switch) is, then, actually to SET that flip-flop, feeding a high input to the NAND gate, which in turn will turn off the reset line to the CPU.
(And, vice-versa, if your computer has a “reset button” on the front like some old computers do, that one throws the flip-flop back to its RESET state, which puts the NAND gate back low, which brings the reset line to the CPU back high. Wiring for push-button toggles is weird!)
Hmm, in most embedded processors I know (e.g., the ESP8266/32 [0], RPi's BMC2835 [1], or Ti's MSP430 [2]), you send the line down for reset but hold it high for running (either by internal pull-up or by actually holding the line).
I was looking at the dials on a refrigerator, and realized I never really knew which way is which - does turning the dial towards "cold" make it colder, or does the opposite, revealing more of the indicator from the "cold" end make it colder?
There is a tapered blue line with numbers, so is the wider end colder, because blue is cold and more blue is colder...or is the other end colder, because it has smaller numbers, and lower temperatures are smaller numbers?
https://i.imgur.com/zXAwnbK.png — (I am using Safari 13.0.3 on macOS Catalina 10.15.1)
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Edit: After seeing the image posted by @iruoy — https://i.imgur.com/OH3QTXQ.png — I have to disagree with you because the circle represents a zero (low voltage - FALSE) and the vertical line represents a one (high voltage - TRUE). If you studied computer science, logic, electrical engineering, or attended any basic course on electronics you would know that ones-and-zeroes are the written representation of an electric current, in fact, they are the basics of computing: Bits.
Here is more information about the power symbol:
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bit
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_symbol
• http://www.decisionsciencenews.com/2016/10/28/off-switch-rem...