When people talk about SAK, I most often associate it with the keywords: quality/consistency/variety.
I've been a scout knife collector for maybe 20 years or so, and as previously mentioned, Victorinox is about all that's left being produced. I would also strongly argue that the Swiss Army knife basically brought about the demise of the traditional scout by evolving and perfecting it. From a purely logical viewpoint, the Pioneer and Tinker are light years ahead of what was manufactured by other companies.But there's more than that. One could argue that the modern multitool (Leatherman or otherwise) has further evolved the species, succeeding the SAK. But that's not entirely true. I believe that a multitool, in it's purest form, is a task oriented tool. You receive a handful of tools, each with a specific purpose, and you use these tools to fix something. It's all about the repair of something that already exists. It's a linear and logical experience. Very left brain. Utterly useful in keeping our known world running efficiently and orderly.The SAK doesn't really seem to play into this multitool line of thinking. It's more chaotic. The tool selection, and sheer number of little shapes and sizes, gives us a more artful approach to life. They persuade us to view life with a more holistic perspective of what can be done. We take these wonderful tiny tools, and find ways not to just repair what we already have, but to build new tools for ourselves. Using a SAK is often more an act of creation than repair. SAK tools enable us to be more introspective in how we see our world, and help us to generate ideas of how to be more than we currently are. We probe what's around us. We whittle off sections to see what's underneath. We explore our environment with a pocket full of magic. We use this myriad of implements to interact with the world around us, not just to fix it. This is the miracle of the Swiss Army knife.