Originally appeared in the Saint Paul Pioneer Press

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Voice recognition, where you talk into a microphone and the computer does its best to recreate your utterances onscreen, is a short cut to madness.

Despite some interesting experiments in telekinesis -- people have actually moved cursors with their minds in test conditions -- let's just say we're not there yet.

So when we talk about a digital revolution, your fingers are still the footsoldiers, your wrists are the artillery, and the mouse and QWERTY keyboard are still the field of battle.

Ain't it sad? Despite our aches and pains, our digits must still traverse the rows of keys, stubbing our fingers when we miss, which is often. Despite all the technological wonders of computing, we still have to hunt and peck like Cro-Magnons poking at a bush. And despite high-speed microprocessors and fiber-optic transmission speeds, we're still hemmed in by the awkward necessity of pressing these little square knobs with our little fleshy fingers.

We're damned no matter what we do. If we stick with QWERTY, we say yes to slowness. If we switch to a Dvorak keyboard, we may speed up a little, but then we slow to the speed of lichen growth when we have to use a regular keyboard.

And as bad as keyboard tapping is, mousework is even worse. Most everyone now knows that the action of pressing mouse keys is far more deleterious to the tender structures of the wrist and hand than typing is.

So have computer makers been reducing mouse reliance or increasing it? Running Windows 98 without a mouse is like trying to plow a field with a plastic fork. It can be done, but you don't want to do it.

The worst offenders are graphic Internet browsers. Hotlinking can't be done except with a mouse. There are no keyboard commands to substitute for mouse action on either Netscape or Internet Explorer.

It's the little things that wear you down. My brother Pat sends me jokes every day or so, but he sends them nested in forwarding windows. He is the third recipient of the jokes, and I am the fourth. So unwrapping each joke requires four double-clicks, at which point I really need a good joke. And as you know, not all Internet jokes are that hilarious.

So when I complained to Pat, he took great umbrage at my ingratitude. Had we not been 2,000 miles apart, and had my hands not been hurting so much from exhuming his jollity, we might have come to blows. Just like in the old days.

And what's all this I hear about wireless mouses? Granted, mice tend to get tangled and twisted in their own tails. And that's bad. But take away that tail, and I know I would never find my mouse again. It would burrow into the haystack of effluvia on my desk and disappear forever.

My desktop data input setup isn't too bad. I have all kinds of ergonomic straps and loops and bumpers to minimize compucramp. Not being a touch typist seems to help. And I use keyboard shortcuts for mouse commands when possible.

But my new laptop, a 266 megahertz Toshiba Satellite, is sizing me for an early grave. It uses one of those rubbery mouse pegs instead of a mouse. Push it one way, and the cursor shoots way past the target. Try to fetch the cursor back, and you sweep past the target in the other direction. This essential process is about as doable as threading a needle with a noodle.

You read the computer magazines. You read the reviews. They are all written in the happy-talk that gushes over new features and guarantees that computing today is as painless as dentistry -- as if no one has been to the dentist lately.

But I know the people who write those reviews, and many of them are hurting. The amount of time they spend at the keyboard, and especially at the mouse end of things, is not good for the protein gauze that is the human body. Beneath those incisive head-and-shoulders portraits are a lot of taped-up, throbbing hands and forearms.

Where do you turn to for relief after the medicine cabinet? Don't look to your computer. It's probably thinking: Defective user? Don't bandage the wrist, replace the whole module. It's cheaper, and more merciful.

Appeal instead to the makers of software. Ask them to create an interface that gives our wrists a rest. They won't do it to be nice. They'll do it out of the simple business logic that says that the best thing for the long-term health of their franchise might not be the maiming of its best customers.

America's Best-Loved Technology Writer(TM), Michael Finley has a free gift for visitors to http://mfinley.com.