Like, yes, i know it’s electric and such. But I recently talked to an engineer and he, as I understand, said that there are still switches and other mechanics but microscopic inside CPUs and circuit boards.
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The switches are transistors.
Transistors are small, solid-state (no moving parts) components. They contain a semi-conductor material laid out in a very specific way, almost like a tiny electrical wire, but imagine three sections, where the middle section is a different material to the others.
As the electricity / electrons try to cross through this material they make it through the outside materials but are stopped by the middle material (the same as if it were an insulator). However, by putting a tiny bit of electricity through that middle material, those first electrons can be helped to “jump the gap” and so the electricity will flow through all three materials as if it were a conductor. Hence “semi” conductor. In certain patterns, and with certain help from outside, the material can conduct or not conduct depending what you want it to do.
This is then an electrically-controlled switch. You put a little electricity into the middle, and a lot of electricity can flow out across the whole device. You turn the power off to that little “control” in the middle and the transistor becomes an insulator and the electricity flowing across the device stops.
By arranging the transistors VERY cleverly, you can then get them to do more than just switch electricity on and off, you can make them even do the opposite of what you intend – to flow when there is no control power and not flow when there is control power. From such arrangements of transistors, you can form logic gates, from logic gates you can do arithmetic, once you get to arithmetic, you can make pretty much everything else that a computer does.
Billions of such transistors, arranged in just the right way, with zero moving parts so just a flat sheet that never moves, allow the electricity coming in to change based on any condition we like, and by feeding the output from one transistor to the input of others, you can make extremely complex circuits. All the inputs from keyboards, mice, joysticks, etc. eventually go through such an arrangement of transistors as an input (i.e. a electrical signal or not) and depending on how it’s been made, you can make it so that a programmer can choose what happens when you press a key or click a mouse to change an output (the screen, a printer, a speaker, etc.) depending on how they want.
All done by a little “electrical wire” with a barrier in it that you can make conduct or not conduct, and change that billions of times every second, depending on what you want to do.
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