The reason that developments like this are exciting is that the games business, being a cutting edge, technologically advanced industry, usually pushes the boundaries of software and hardware development for the sake of market share.

Technology like this for, say, computer controls would ordinarily evolve a lot slower if there were a lesser need for it aside  from gaming. However, once developed, you can see how it could easily transform into some kind of gesture control for computer operating systems and applications. Who knows, you may even get a workout whilst doing a spreadsheet in the future!  Will a workout mat eventually replace the old desk?  Maybe we can eliminate the need for going to a gym!  Do employers only hire fit people in the future?

We are certainly at a crossroads with computers, where the basic mouse has been around too long and has created too many overuse injuries. It is more than time that we took computer input to a new level of evolution, and this may be the glimpse of what’s to come.

Whether this technology can save us from RSI related injuries is unknown, but it may help wean us off using a mouse. It may also lead to opportunities in computer use for people with all kinds of different disabilities, and not just RSI.

Is this the dawn of a new age in computer ergonomics, or is it just a gimmick ?

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It should also be noted that video gaming is a highly addictive pastime (I speak from the experience of my youth). Video games are designed to be addictive; let’s face it, if they were not, players would rapidly lose interest and move onto something else, and the manufacturers would not sell many games.

There are usually very high levels of repetitive motion involved to complete a game stage and there are usually many levels to  complete, which allow the individual to achieve the elevated status of finishing that level (quite often against the clock) and progress to the next with a sense of achievement. There is a high degree of addiction involved in this process which can involve spending literally many hours in a sedentary position whilst making very repetitive motions with your arms, hands and possibly feet while using keyboards, mice, joysticks and other types of controllers.

In the specific case described in the article, a girl came down with a bad skin condition involving sore lumps in her hands and feet after playing for hours on a gaming machine. In a quote from the article that refers to a Swiss doctors’ report it states that,

“Excessive video gaming is currently regarded as an alarming health issue… Recently, organic pathologies such as acute tendinitis, called Wiiitis, or video game-induced knuckle pads have been added to the list of video game-related pathologies. We report… ’PlayStation palmar hidradenitis’ as a cutaneous (skin) pathology induced by console gaming.”

They also recommended that,

“If you’re worried about soreness in your hands when playing a games console, it might be sensible to give your hands a break from time to time and don’t play excessively if your hands are prone to sweating.”

It’s easy to make these recommendations but try telling that to an addicted game player when they are close to achieving that ‘next level’. The medical community does not currently appear to address the addictive nature of computer gaming as well as the resulting conditions. To be honest, I can’t see any way to control this other than extensive education or (more radically) forcing developers to programme in rest breaks to gaming software itself, maybe between levels (you can just see that happening!).

My guess is we will continue to see more and more of these types of injuries and more and more of them will be happening to children who still have a large portion of their computer intensive lives ahead of them. I think that the only way to truly address the problem is to educate parents about the dangers of such gaming systems and their potential for causing repetitive strain type injuries. However, its not just children who are at risk. How many grown adults spend their ‘away from work’ time playing 3-4 hours of video games a night? I’d say a fairly large percentage of the (mainly male) 15-30+ age group.

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There are so many ways today to fritter away huge amounts of our time in our new virtual worlds. Have you ever played a video game and noticed how 3 hours of your life just disappeared?

Technology has brought us immense benefits as a society, but it has also made us slaves to a great extent, and we spend ever increasing amounts of time interacting with devices whether they be computers, mobile phones, PDAs, games consoles, MP3 players, GPS or TV remotes.

A substantial portion of employment now involves working on computers, whether it be the inputting/analysing of data, or the creation of the latest software that controls our lives. The trouble is that, the more high technology we introduce to our lives, the more time we spend interacting with it, often to the disadvantage of our health. It’s not too hard to imagine that, if current trends continue, there will be a technological gadget to interact with from the moment we wake up until the moment we fall asleep (or more scarily from the moment we are born until the moment we die!).

The Web has expanded the information available at our fingertips by a staggering amount. It has also changed the way we spend large amounts of our leisure time (news surfing, watching videos, e-shopping, chatting, talking, sharing photography, socialising, network gaming, browsing) but this has come about at the expense of our health since we are now sitting in a sedentary posture for hours on end making small repetitive movements with our arms, hands and eyes, often in a slouched, bad posture. Before the Internet was available, we obtained our information from books, magazines, newspapers, talks etc which at least involved a walk to the newsagent, library, pub, town hall etc. Socialising was solely done by interacting with people you physically met, and gaming involved running around the public park kicking a football. Nowadays the exercise involved is often no more than climbing out of bed and turning the computer on, and we wonder why obesity rates are spiralling out of control! Not only do we have all this technology available, but we also feel compelled to use it for longer (often hours at a time) in a way that we never did with other more conventional pastimes.

The one thing that all of this technology has in common is that it has forced us to replace lots of big movements with lots of small, repetitive movements, and spend many hours interacting with virtual worlds on a small screen instead of interacting with the real world. It has disassociated us from reality, and made us feel like this virtual world is hugely important, so much so that we can’t imagine life without it. It has led us to be at a heightened risk of developing many types of problems including the very real threat of Repetitive Strain Injuries (RSIs). It has also just as worryingly made serious addicts out of all of us.

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• computers (mice/keyboards) for our work, gaming, web surfing, emailing, blogging, socialising
• organisers to plan our lives
• mobile phones for text messaging, web surfing etc
• other hand held email devices
• mp3 players
• digital cameras
• laptops
• game consoles
• TV remotes and 100’s of channels to hop

What do all these devices have in common?

We spend an ever increasing portion of our daily lives interacting with them, often in a very unergonomic and repetitive manner (small repetitive motions with our arms, wrists, fingers and thumbs). Many of the gadgets themselves require computer interaction.

By interacting with these gadgets, we are maximising our exposure to the causes of RSI-type conditions, when we really should be minimising it. This is especially true if you are one of the many people who uses a computer in your daily job. Using a computer for 6-8 hours a day may already be putting your body at risk from RSI. If you add in interaction with some of the above gadgets, you will be increasing that risk. RSI (or cumulative stress disorder) conditions are indeed cumulative in nature, meaning they worsen over time.

Our bodies have never had to intensively utilise devices in such a way ever before in history, and therefore, day after day, they are not functioning as they were designed to do. We maximise our risk of injury by choosing to interact with the above devices on top of work related computer use. While technology has brought amazing benefits, there is a down-side if we are not careful. To compound matters, we may well be maximising our stress levels if we allow ourselves to become enslaved by it 24/7.
It is sometimes difficult to remember a time when these gadgets didn’t exist in our lives, and how we existed without them, but our future ergonomic health may depend on how we manage our exposure to not just computers, but anything that requires repetitive interaction. Every click can add up over time, and the health consequences can, in the worst cases, be severe. Only time will tell, but unless the human body evolves rapidly to cope with the new demands placed upon it, we may be on the verge of a massive RSI epidemic.

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