Are you All Thumbs?

[Colin]

came across this rather interesting article in my travels today:

Thumbs Are the New Fingers for GameBoy Youth
Reuters
Mar 23 2002 5:28PM

LONDON (Reuters) - The use of gadgets such as mobile phones and GameBoys has caused a physical mutation in young people's hands, according to a British Sunday newspaper.
New research carried out in nine cities around the world shows that the thumbs of people under the age of 25 have taken over as the hand's most dexterous digit, said The Observer.

The change affects those who have grown up with hand-held devices where the thumbs are used for keying in text messages and emails.

"The relationship between technology and the users of technology is mutual. We are changing each other," said Dr. Sadie Plant of Warwick University's Cybernetic Culture Research Unit.

"Discovering that the younger generation has taken to using thumbs in a completely different way and are instinctively using thumbs where the rest of us are using our index fingers is particularly interesting."

In her research, Plant noticed that while those less used to mobile phones used one or several fingers to access the keypad, younger people used both thumbs ambidextrously, barely looking at the keys as they made rapid entries.

[Joe Tully]

That's pretty interesting, though I really have to complain about the use of the phrase "physical mutation". Enhanced dexterity is most likely learning and is a mental thing, but if it is due to the hand's changed musculature, then it's case of the hand developing in certain ways due to exercise, much like how a bodybuilder develops stronger muscles. Saying that using your thumbs more causes them to mutate is just plain wrong, and reminds me of some of the poorly conceived ideas about evolution put forth before Darwin in the early 1800s, by scientists such as Lamarck.