Back trouble

    Would you agree that the world is still a better place on the whole despite all these revenge effects?

    I think so. We're comparing technological problems now with the problems we had a hundred years ago or even two hundred years ago. There was technology then and that technology had problems. American railroad timetables once had advertisements for artificial limbs. What's happened though is that we have substituted chronic problems for catastrophic ones so instead of the massive loss of life and limb, we now have less dramatic but still disabling problems.

    The patterns of industrial disability tend to come on slowly and cumulatively - back problems, carpal tunnel syndrome. It is hard to say: "install this safety device and it isn't going to happen". You need long periods of study and validating different techniques. Even now there is no mouse or keyboard in the world that has a health claim from manufacturer's categorically stating it has been scientifically verified that this design is healthier for you than some other design.

    Some people suggest that RSI does not exist. There is no medical proof.

    What they tend to say is that it's a form of hysteria. The difficulty I have with that kind of argument is that it assumes some kind of radical division of mind and body that goes against the whole direction of current medical research. I think it is more meaningful to ask why is it that in newspaper offices that use the same editorial keyboard systems in one paper there will be a very high incidence of RSI while in other papers a very low level. IT can't be the equipment alone or the equipment mainly but it is probably a combination of the stress the workers are under. There is something about the job conditions there that is resulting in a problem both mental and physical. I think it's a terrible retreat from the frontier of medical research to say that something is either visible on an x-ray machine or an oscilloscope or it is faked.