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In Digital Age, 'All Thumbs' Is a Term
of Highest Praise
By Geoffrey A. FowlerStaff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal
April 17, 2002 12:28 pm ET
In Tokyo, so many kids are pounding at new electronic gadgets with their thumbs they're known as
"oyayubi sedai" -- the "thumb generation." Nokia Corp. sponsored a contest for the fastest Finnish
thumbs, where 2,700 players competed to thumb tap the highest score in the "Snake" game included on
Nokia phones. AT&T Wireless Services Inc. is running ads featuring powerful thumbs that poke through
mittens, boxing gloves and golf gloves, ready for action on a mobile phone.
Being "all thumbs" used to mean you were clumsy. But phones, wireless e-mail devices, and all the other
hand-held gadgets featuring "thumb boards" are turning thumbs into universal index fingers for a
generation of teenagers, young adults and high-tech businesspeople.
Some young people now point and ring doorbells with their thumbs. Thumbs are growing more muscled
and dexterous, according to a new cross-cultural study conducted by Sadie Plant, a free-lance British
culture and technology researcher. "The relationship between technology and the users of technology is
mutual," Ms. Plant says. "We are changing each other."
While our Darwinian ancestors used their smallish thumbs to swing from vines, we do a good job using
our bigger ones to cradle small keyboards and swoop around in fine patterns. So says Joseph Towles,
who is researching thumb mechanics at Stanford University. "We have more ability to move the thumb
with a wider range of motion than other digits," Mr. Towles explains.
The ability to apply our thumbs nimbly enough to type separates humans from other primates, says
Randall Susman, a professor at the State University of New York at Stony Brook who has studied thumb
development for the past 25 years. Though monkeys and chimpanzees have opposable thumbs, they still
have a tough time using tools with much finesse. That's because a couple million years ago, early
humans developed additional muscles in their hands that enable modern man to, say, move his thumbs
while grasping a telephone.
Throughout the ages, thumbs have both comforted and caused trouble. Babies get pleasure from
sucking them. In ancient Rome, thumbs-up or thumbs-down from the emperor could mean the
difference between life and death for gladiators in the arena. University of Kansas Classics Professor
Anthony Corbeill, who has researched the subject, says the thumbs-up gesture was actually the kill
signal.
The thumbs-up signal of approval arrived in World War II, with American G.I.s serving in Europe. But
even today, an extended thumb with a sweep of the hand means something akin to "up yours" in
Nigeria.
Ads for AT&T Wireless encourage thumb power in its current marketing.
Thumb plucking has been common throughout most of Africa for centuries among mbira players, who
produce a plethora of percussive tones by plucking with their thumbs on rows of metal rods. The thing
is a kind of thumb piano.
Thumbs began their quest for technological supremacy over index fingers in the late 1980s and early
1990s on the joysticks and hand-held controllers of video-game systems. Jim Joseph, an administrator
at an early-childhood center in Manhattan, remembers playing the original "Legend of Zelda" back in
1988 on his Nintendo for so long he would develop what was came to be dubbed "Nintendo thumb": a
sore, burning pain at the base of the poor digit. "I would play up to three hours, but would need a break
at some point because it would get really frustrating," says Mr. Joseph, now 22. In 1990, cases of what is
known as "Nintendinitis" were described in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Grown-up thumbs took over with mobile-phone text messaging only a few years later. "Texting," as it's
known, is particularly popular in Europe and East Asia, where phone users punch individual keys
multiple times to spell out 160-character messages. British thumbs alone type more than 1.4 billion text
messages each month, according to Virgin Mobile.
Now, U.S. cellphone carriers and hand-held-device makers are hoping to tap into the thumb market, too.
The popular BlackBerry wireless e-mail device features a keyboard for thumb-typers. Over the past
eight months, computer-accessory makers and hand-held-computer makers such as Handspring Inc.
and Sony Corp. have released BlackBerry-style thumb boards, largely as replacements for the Palmstyle graffiti-stylus drawing, which itself was meant to replace keyboards.
But thumb typing involves some growing pains. Working on keys half the size of an average thumb tip,
the user must cultivate a delicate touch. For those whose thumbs aren't petite, there is this "splat
problem," says Michael Ryan, a New York lawyer who uses his BlackBerry during down-time on
conference calls. A "splat" occurs when a big old thumb hits two or more keys by mistake. Mark Guibert,
vice president of Research In Motion, the company that makes the BlackBerry, says the oblong shape of
the BlackBerry key was designed to maximize the surface area for the thumb to hit the key. The key to
avoiding splat is to use only the very tip of the thumb, an acquired knack.
Ms. Plant, in her eight-city survey, which was sponsored by Motorola Inc., noticed that less-experienced
users tended to employ one or several fingers to access thumb boards. But the youthful and seasoned
tend to use both thumbs ambidextrously, barely even looking at the keys as they rapidly do their allthumbs touch-typing. BlackBerry officials say that new users of their system can quickly reach up to 40
words per minute.
Increasingly, doctors and users are worrying that overuse of the thumb can lead to repetitive-strain
injury. Anthony Barrett, a 24-year-old barrister in London, says he's a victim of TMI -- text message
injury -- after four years of punching out more than 500 text messages per month left him with serious
pain in his thumb joints. "The rest of my fingers were fine," says Mr. Barrett, who touch-types with all 10
fingers at work.
In response to a host of RSI complaints, U.K. telecom network Virgin Mobile recently undertook a
campaign called "How to Practice Safe Text" in concert with the British Chiropractic Association. To
avoid injury, it recommends a series of hand-squeeze exercises with a "texterciser," a foam rectangle
that looks just like a cellphone. There are also shoulder shrugs, wrist and neck stretches. Mr. Barrett
says his thumb pain has diminished somewhat since he started doing the exercises and cut down his
text messaging -- to around 300 a month.
Write to Geoffrey A. Fowler at geoffrey.fowler@wsj.com