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I was trying to think the other day, which cartoon cat was it that said, "I hate those meeces to pieces"?
I can remember it very clearly from afterschool cartoon programs of the 1960s -- the golden age of afterschool cartoon programs, you know. But I can't remember if it was Tom, or Sylvester, or Snaggletooth.
What brings this to mind is a pain I sometimes get in my right hand. Whenever a computer user feels pain in the hands or wrists, alarms sound and red lights flash. Carpal tunnel syndrome and other typing-related repetitive stress injuries have done to my generation what grapeshot did to the our great great grandfathers. Many people succumbed to the lure of computers and used them to seek their fortunes, only to find at the end of the rainbow a pair of splints and a few rolls of Ace bandages.
Everyone blames computer keyboards for the epidemic of aching wrists and hands, but I'm not so sure. When I have an ache, it's just in my right hand. My mouse hand.
The mouse is a clever idea, created in the 1960s by computer pioneer Doug Engelbart at Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center. It arose from the insight that conventional keyboards couldn't track all that was happening on a graphically-based computer screen. You needed a tool that could turn the screen into a sheet of graph paper, that could find any point on the X-Y axes, make selections, and initiate action.
A mouse is just a box with a ball in it, and a sensor. This little ball costing a few pennies, that does whatever you want it to, has done as much to revolutionize what we call computing as the microprocessor itself. Engelbart called it a mouse, because of its size and because the connecting cord made it look, for a split second, like its groundling namesake.
Steve Jobs fell in love with the mouse, and built it into the first bit-mapping Apple computers. The first mouse I ever saw was on an Apple Lisa out back in 1982. It was intriguing, but I intuitively didn't like it. I still don't like it. When I get a new program, the first thing I do is check out the keyboard shortcuts. While the mouse is perfect for functions like sizing pictures onscreen, I feel I can pick put most commands faster on the keyboard than leaving the keyboard to mess with the mouse.
My suspicions were corroborated this week by a page I found on the Web (http://www.brad.ac.uk/cc/trainnews/96-01/mouse.html), containing an article by Deborah Quilter, co-author with Emil Pascarelli of Repetitive Strain Injury: A Computer User's Guide (John Wiley & Sons). The article suggests that mice cause more repetitive injuries than typing.
First, mice are more repetitious. All you ever do with them is twist, squeeze, and click. Second, the brunt of repetition is borne by one hand, not two. Quilter says that, just as we tend to use more dishwashing detergent than we need to, we twist and click and squeeze harder than necessary. Something about wanting to be sure we're doing it right.
So we're taking one of our most prized anatomical possessions, our dominant hand, which already is asked to write our checks, punch in our phone numbers, open our doors and do half the typing, and adding to it a lot of weird twisting, squeezing and clicking.
People wonder why keyboard stress syndromes didn't seem to happen back during the days of manual typewriters. It wasn't that our parents' generation was more stoic, it as that electricity encouraged us to use our backs and shoulders less. We let all the action happen at our fingertips, and that is bad. The design of the mouse especially encourages you to focus action on your hand and wrist, putting more stress on delicate, already overworked muscles.
Track balls aren't the answer, either. Though they transfer some of the stress from the index finger to the thumb, Quilter says they put the hand in no less awkward a position than mousses.
She offers several hints on how to use mice and trackballs more safely:
Learn those keyboard shortcuts. Windows 95 reveals the dozen most frequent shortcuts in its online help. Your applications will have shortcuts of their own.
If you must mouse, mouse right. When you click, drag and circle the mouse over and over again, proper technique,
Try to move your body a bit when you work. Don't mouse with your wrist in a resting position. Move the from the shoulder. This relieves tension and takes stress off your wrist and hand.
Keep the mouse at keyboard level. A double-decker keyboard/mousepad system is begging for trouble.
Easy does it. Click gently. Don't grip the mouse tightly. Pretend it's an egg -- a nonhardboiled one.
Don't lift your pinkie. It may look dainty, but it tightens up the entire hand.
Finally, consider net effect. We love to compute, to correspond, and to play, sometimes late into the night. But we are conducting these space-age activities with bodies designed for hunting and gathering. Doing all your socializing, all your moneymaking, all your communication, and all your entertainment by computer is just a bit too much.
Use the phone. Take a walk. Get a life. Your carpal tunnel will thank you.
Michael Finley's book Techno-Crazed, from Peterson's, contains more information about computers and stress injuries. Visit Mike at http://mfinley.com. Or write him at mfinley@mfinley.com.
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