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Technology: View from the top
Where in the world?
You can't push an ad for Viagra in Singapore, where it's illegal. But Digital Island CEO Ruann Ernst can spare you -- showing where users are located when they log in.
By Mark Compton
[02/28/00]

Do they know where you live?
ICraveTV wants to build geographic "borders" online so it can stream live TV to specific markets -- but would regional divisions be acceptable for a World Wide Web?
By Damien Cave
[02/28/00]

21st Challenge
21st Challenge No. 31
Shall I compare thee to a transistor? Shakespearean odes to technology.
By Charlie Varon and Jim Rosenau
[02/26/00]

You said what?!
ENow wants to track every word you type in a chat room and peruse the results to divine the "global collective consciousness."
By Janelle Brown
[02/25/00]

Linux in every lap
Stars of the original Mac development team try to solve one of the hottest puzzles in technology today: How to make the Linux desktop user-friendly.
By Lydia Lee
[02/24/00]

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I was new to the world of "cumulative trauma disorder," an umbrella term for a condition where muscles and tendons in the upper body -- the neck, shoulders, chest, arms, wrists and hands -- can become strained, irritated or pinched. And like many keyboard junkies diagnosed with RSI, my doctor said my traumatized limbs also showed signs of early carpal tunnel, a constriction of the nerve as it passes through the wrist.

As an online news reporter, my title could just as easily have been "thinking typist." I was terrified that the excruciating pain in my shoulders and wrists would end my career, not to mention my life; sometimes I couldn't even use a fork without a jolt of agony ricocheting up my arm.

But no one seemed to have a solution. My employer, like thousands of Net companies, handed out photocopied line drawings of rigidly proper typing postures that would help us avoid RSI -- but once I had it, they didn't have much advice. Doctors suggested everything from massage to glucosamine sulfate, a seashell derivative sometimes used to treat arthritis, to crying more (release the tension, you know) -- none of which soothed the stabbing pain. Soon, I was taking time off work, learning voice recognition software and asking strangers to open my Odwalla bottles to avoid the wrist pain.

Around 1.8 million workers each year experience musculoskeletal disorders, according to the Labor Department's Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA); but those numbers are from 1997, eons ago in Internet time. And the category includes a ton of back problems, says Gary Orr, ergonomist at OSHA. Orr counted 250,000 cases of "repeated trauma," which includes the sound and vibration-induced. Of that there are 90,000 cases that involved time off from work. Carpal tunnel sucks away the most workdays -- 25 on average -- even more than amputations and fractures. The government doesn't have great records on how many of those injuries are related to computer use; many employers don't report the cause of injury or even the occupation of the injured worker, says Orr.

But OSHA is getting more serious about RSI. In November it proposed a national ergonomic standard -- basically a guideline for properly aligning workstations to workers -- that it says will each year spare 300,000 workers from injuries and save the U.S. economy $9 billion. OSHA is receiving public comments on the standard until Thursday.

This is music to the ears of the folks on Sorehand, many of whom not only commiserate about pain management, but are actively working to increase awareness of RSI. Since the summer of 1998, a group of about 100 people who originally met on Sorehand have been preparing for this Tuesday: International RSI Awareness Day. Under the slogan "Because work shouldn't hurt!" organizers in cities stretching from Brazil to Canada and from Spain to New Zealand chose Feb. 29 -- the only nonregular day of the year -- to speak to local legislators and hold panel discussions and press conferences about RSI.

"It began with a desire to increase awareness about this injury," says International RSI Awareness Day chairwoman Catherine Fenech, who runs an RSI support group in Toronto and describes herself as an "injured worker activist." She got tendinitis working on a cash register that was too high for her and now has a permanent disability. "I want to keep people from making the same mistakes I made," she says.

Next page | The agony of twisting a jar lid -- or masturbating