Thursday, November 03, 2005

Mouse-mulling

It’s scary how fast one gets used to things. When I bought my laptop a few months ago I made sure I also got an external mouse as an accessory - since (like most new laptop users) I wasn’t comfortable with the pointing stick or touchpad that’s part of the machine. Well, last week the external mouse stopped functioning and around this time I was working out of home for four to five days straight - so I made the adjustment to using the pointing stick (with that annoying red "nipple" on top).

It was slow and uncomfortable and made my index finger sore, but I must’ve gotten used to it - because when I came in to office after a week yesterday, the external mouse felt unwieldy in my hand. It was like a throwback to 1995 when I used a mouse for the first time at a friend’s place and never thought I’d get a grip on it.

Reminds me of something I read once about evolutionary changes occuring in the human wrist and fingers because of the demands of rapidly changing technology (mouse use, SMS-ing, etc). If anyone has any info on that subject, please share - haven’t been able to find much on the Net.

(DD?)

5 comments:

  1. You can't be serious - that sounds completely Lamarckian. A giraffe getting a longer neck because of it having to stretch out to reach leaves that are on high branches?

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  2. J,

    have u removed my response to kishore singh's review?

    strange!

    R.

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  3. Yeah, imagine a world where the fingers will get curled down and the palm will evolve into the shape of an upturned cup -- as if it’s always holding a mouse. Handshakes will become handclasps. The new word will find its way into the Oxford dictionary. TOI will carry the annual story about new words that year. And Delhi Times will ask celebrities how they still manage to flash the V sign. But…

    The scariest part is that TOI, in all probability, will be thriving even then!

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  4. R: not removed, just hidden for now. Will be doing the same to other comments for a week or so, while I'm out of town. Will enable them once I'm back.

    Fool on the Hill: alas, I know some people who hand-clasp already. Not sure they've ever been around a computer mouse though.

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  5. Um, Jai, unless an intrinsic ability to manouver new technology multiplies in the gene pool because people with this ability procreate furiously, and less tech-friendly creatures don't have kids because the geeks have cornered the opposite sex, any "evolutionary change" is really not possible. In fact, I think it might be fair to comment that evolutionary change for humans by natural selection might have ceased entirely.

    Memes are a different matter entirely.

    And yeah, agree with Warriors about this being Lamarckian and all that.

    ReplyDelete