Inventions That Could Fix Our Posture When We Use Computers and Devices
The only good sitting position is done with eyes closed. There is no good computer posture.
Today, with the mass adoption of devices, people’s bodies are collapsing. They slump in chairs and drop their head forward. The latter is called “nerd neck,” yet so many people do it the term isn’t fair to nerds. According to a blog post by the Benevida Health and Wellness Center: “It’s defined as a posture where your neck slants anteriorly (forward), positioning the head an inch or more in front of the atlas (first neck vertebra). [This] common postural deformity afflicts between 66% and 90% of the population.”
Sitting for long periods is hell on the lower back. Our whole spine turns into a C-shape.
During sitting, most people will eventually fall into a posterior pelvic tilt
-Dan Baumstark, MSPT, CHT
A properly arranged spine would uphold four curves in an “S-shape,” and prop our head on the C1 like a soccer ball balanced on the cap of a baseball bat. But this is extremely difficult to do when we are engaged with the internet.
Recent breakthroughs in consumer tech are taking ergonomic solutions into consideration. These are meant to free both hands and stand up straight. Though not widely adopted yet, they have the potential to fix the problem described here, in a Well+Good article:
“ ‘Your neck is inherently unstable,’ according to Lara Heimann, Yoga teacher, ‘On top of the cervical spine you have this large object — your skull — that can be anywhere from 12 to 15 pounds. And the skull is sitting on the first cervical vertebrae called C1 or the atlas. It’s like the mythology of holding the globe — there it needs to be sitting in a way where it’s balanced and well-supported (by muscles) so that it’s not tipping one way or the other.
“ ‘When you tip off of the structure of this column, you’re immediately putting more demand on the other structures to hold that head in place. The suboccipital muscles in the neck, right underneath your skull, come in to help and become really tight. It can become so constricted that it’s restricting good circulation and blood flow.’ ”
Note: I will refer to desktops and laptops as “computers”; smartphones and tablets are called “devices”; and “screens” are everything.
While our brain is humming along the information superhighway at the fastest available speed, our body is doing nothing. We have a body built for foraging and walking that is now sitting most of the day and staring into a field space that is the size of a playing card from a distance of 18–36 inches. The box is brightly lit, which scorches the eyes after 10,000 hours. The body doesn’t move for much of this length of time.
What are we doing with our hands? The fingers move like a spider making a web typing and tapping — a narrow set of rapid actions — while the rest of the arms hang off the shoulders with nothing to do.
It’s all wrong. This is not the body of a toad! Yet, we act like toads, unblinking, tapping at the screen for hours on end.
How do we fix the problem? Get offline and move! Break the pattern. Get outside. Yeah, right. Most people can’t stay on their yoga mat for 60 minutes at home without checking the phone for urgent news.
Our minds are enfolded in the Internet, and we are not going to smash our computers and drown our devices, so we need a new set of tools to fix the physical issues that arose from prolonged internet use.
We need something that works and is easy to use. Remember iPods were not easy to use at first, but we put our head down and worked at it. Our thumbs had to develop the fine motor skills to execute songs. It was easier for the millennials and impossible for the pre baby boomers, but most people got the hang of it.
We need something far reaching that allows us to stand up straight and look forward. It needs to bring the screen with us, and keep it in front of our face. If we want to either sit or stand, the screen needs to come with us. We also need to drop our hands, so we don’t revert to the position of someone taking a dart out of the board.
Solutions — 1G
Sitting for hours in front of a computer would cause some people so much pain that they had to lie down on the floor just to calm their back spasms. Half their muscles had gotten so weak, that lying on the floor was the only way to straighten out their spine.
But that meant going offline. Have you ever held your laptop over your head and tried typing? It’s hard to do that. So they had to lie there, and think about all the Data that was streaming past — baseball scores, used car price quotes, email responses. There was nothing to be done about it. They were missing chunks of time.
Then smartphones appeared and that changed everything. Handheld devices have been around for a while, but we should not forget how revolutionary they were — and part of the reason they were so widely adopted. Smartphones give us the chance to stand up and walk around without disconnecting.
This took us halfway to restoring posture to our bodies. When we could stand up and walk, our lower backs regained some of their former strength and the hip joints started moving.
But the upper half of the body is for the most part inert, the shoulder joints are not moving. Our shoulders are rounded and our heads incline forward. This interrupts the flow of blood to our brain. Meanwhile, our eyes continue staring totally, as it takes longer to process the data with exhausted brains.
The next step is to free up both hands.
Do you remember Minority Report (with Tom Cruise in a fugitive role)? It was the first movie I saw to show wiping gestures to add and clear data. Tony Stark brought this further in Avengers. His tech displayed YouTube videos in thin air. These movies were based on Sci-Fi concepts, but they were also movies, and actors look better gathering data with good posture than degenerate hackers slouching over a computer.
These characters also behaved in ways that are uncharacteristic in real life. They spent most of their time not looking at screens. If they pulled out a device, they used it to quickly gather and share information. They were able to process the info quickly, and then they moved on. In the movies we don’t see Ironman losing time because he got distracted and forgot what he needed to find out in the first place.
In reality, humans stare numbly into screens most of the day. The capacity of their brain to process data is diminished. As a scholarly article mentions, “the 5-HT3 (serotonin) receptor exhibits rapid desensitization after sustained agonist exposure.” This article may have nothing to do with my points, but the serotonin hit is what many believe is behind the internet addiction.
Solutions — 2G
Voice to Text — This key piece of user technology has improved drastically since its inception. Before, when it was first released, you spoke into the elusive microphone of your smartphone and the text that would unravel bore no resemblance to what you had just said. Today, the words self correct into the right ones, and it is mostly problem free. It has become reliable.
But voice to text is not widely adopted. Who knows why, but people still like to use their thumb, skin on screen. It might be a sense that we’re still in control. We tap, therefore we are. There could be privacy concerns. People might be suspicious of talking into the web. The tech works but it must be missing something.
AI virtual assistant (not to be confused with a human in another country who earns money) — If voice to text works then this should too. Those annoying interactions (“Fuck you, Siri!”) should be a thing of the past. No one likes to be misunderstood, especially by your AI bitch, and today they are on their toes. They never sleep. They “wake up” to prompts (Alexa!) or a squeeze of the Pixel 3 phone. Were they ever away? AI virtual assistants are easy to use after a little training, and they might even anticipate your preferences. I want nothing to do with my Google assistant. But I lean forward when I type, so don’t ask me.
Solutions — 3G
Smart Glasses — They are equipped with an HD video recorder and microphone; can support both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth; and come with an augmented reality (AR) screen to check email and browse the web.
Apple AR Glasses are not yet available, and details are murky. Different sources say they might be as expensive as a decent iPhone, and they could be released between 2021 and 2023.
“Details matter. It’s worth waiting to get it right.”
-Steve Jobs
The Marvel Avengers movies showed Tony Stark using AR glass to quickly access information. He also talked to his AI assistant, Jarvis. This could work if you were willing to talk into your phone’s assistant all day, issuing directives like a pre industrial-era general speaking to scribes. If you keep the headphones on (or buds in) all day, you would conceivably have no need to look down and type with your thumb.
These three technologies — Glass, Voice to Text, and Virtual Assistant — have huge implications for fixing our postures while staying tethered to the internet.
Mobile devices freed up one hand. Voice commands free up both hands. You can look at the sky, lift your shoulders and open your chest, and take a deep breath while you read an email.
The next step will be to relax the face and close the eyes, and be online.
One last thought, people might prefer glasses that look more like traditional athletic sunglasses.
