Computer Mouse

A device that controls the movement of the cursur or pointeron a display pictures A mouse is a small object you can roll along a hard, flat surface. Its name is derived from its shape, which looks a bit like a mouse, its connecting wire that one can imagine to be the mouse's tail, and the fact that one must make it scurry along a surface. As you move the mouse, the pointer on the display screen moves in the same direction. Mice contain at least one button and sometimes as many as three, which have different functions depending on whatprogram is running. Some newer mice also include a scroll wheel for scrolling through long documents.

Invented by Douglas Engelbart of Stanford Research Center in 1963, and pioneered by Xerox in the 1970s, the mouse is one of the great breakthroughs in computerergonomics because it frees the user to a large extent from using thekeyboard In particular, the mouse is important for graphical user interfaces because you can simply point to options and objects andclick a mouse button. Suchapplications are often called point-and-click programs. The mouse is also useful for graphics programs that allow you to draw pictures by using the mouse like a pen, pencil, or paintbrush.

There are three basic types of mice:

1. mechanical: Has a rubber or metal ball on its underside that can roll in all directions. Mechanical sensors within the mouse detect the direction the ball is rolling and move the screen pointer accordingly.
2. optomechanical: Same as a mechanical mouse, but uses optical sensors to detect motion of the ball.
3. optical: Uses a laser to detect the mouse's movement. You must move the mouse along a special mat with a grid so that the optical mechanism has a frame of reference. Optical mice have no mechanical moving parts. They respond more quickly and precisely than mechanical and optomechanical mice, but they are also more expensive.

Many of you will visit us as a part a journey of discovery as to why doing a seemingly simple task like sitting at a computer can have a wide range of life impacting consequences. Hopefully some of you are here in the hope of avoiding such consequences. We cannot tell you how you personally got Carpal Tunnel Syndrome, DeQuervains tendonitis or one of the myriad of conditions that can occur, but we can simply explain why all who use computers that do not understanding a very human condition, fatigue, could develop a condition as a consequence.

We were all designed to Fatigue!

That isn't designed to fail! Fatigue is fundamental to our design to warn us to stop and take a break. Fatigue causes ache, if we do not ache we do not go onto injure (fail).

Back when our design was being honed we seldom sat and did anything for hours and hours a day, and hundreds of days a year. Stone axes were seldom wielded (we suspect) many millions of times a year and a life expectancy of about 30 (possible due to some of those axes) would likely have made the development of chronic conditions less of a worry at that time and so nature may have overlooked the need to adapt us for sitting and working as we do today.

While she did make sure we notice aches and pains she also equipped us to temporarily ignore some of them under certain circumstance. One circumstance she saw most dire was anything "life threatening". Though in preparing us for this she assumed that under such a circumstance we would be "thinking, a lot" and planning our survival moment to moment. Consequently she designed pain and thinking circuits in the brain to overlap so that when we are actively thinking, concentrating, signals received over our pain circuits are "dulled", much like turning down the volume on a fire siren. As we describe it: "falling over to aches or pains too easily in those times could have been the difference between eating lunch and being lunch!" This process, described by brain and migraine researchers, is called Cognitive Distraction and is why when we are busy concentrating we do not notice the warning signs of fatigue so stop awhile, which might help us to avoid many of the clinical conditions that can be directly correlated with it. We view Cognitive Distraction as the "missing link" in the understanding as to why extensive hours of computer work may cause many of the fatigue related syndromes people have to live with today.

Fatigue is a flag as to muscle "supplies" being low. It is caused by a build up of toxic byproducts of our muscle biochemistry. We can continue to work under those circumstances because we are assumed to be in survival mode [CD is a primeval survival mechanism]. But typing that report or surfing the web are likely to be less critical to our long term survival than they are necessary to satiate our short term perception of need. This is a part of the challenge in putting things right. The instinct involved is survival which was not anticipated as being activated by an enduring short term stimulus of need. It is mostly down to us as individuals as to how we cope with all these "opposing forces. Until the first baby is born with a USB port instead of a tummy button we suspect that nature will leave us to sort this one out by ourselves.

Those who do not know of the fatigue issue, or cannot see the benefits of changing the way they have been taught to work since the dawn of the computer mouse will not see a reason to change until it hurts! Much like many only see the benefit of wearing a seatbelt an inch or two from the windscreen they are about to fly through. We are concerned that statistics suggest that that 1 in 3 schoolchildren being taught to use a computer today will likely become impaired to a point of disability before they have repaid their student loans. We are not assuming the passing of mouse laws anytime soon, though one actually does exist in the US and that is a design standard called Section 508, required for all Federal Government purchases. Because there is no direction (ergonomic standards) and little if any clinical research by our industry into the way we work, save for our own AirO2bic mouse/CTS clinical study, anyone can make an "ergonomic product" without the need to explain why it is ergonomic. So in focusing upon what we (you) can do and remembering the fact that we cannot escape from fatigue, we have evolved a comprehensive and cohesive strategy that we call Anti.Fatigue™