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Thumbs Are the New Fingers for GameBoy Youth
An anonymous reader writes "Reuters is running an interesting story on how the use of gadgets such as mobile phones and GameBoys has caused a physical mutation in young people's hands. The use of the thumb is a deviation from the use of the index finger..."
So, an invention caused a DNA change? Try "adaptation", Reuters.
Of course, these are the people that won't call a suicide bomber who kills 3000 people a "terrorist".
If I play a musical instrument then I don't look at my fingers anymore (either when playing the piano or guitar), does that mean that I have mutated in a musick playing monster?
I think the author mixed 'learning' with 'mutating'
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If code was hard to write, it should be hard to read
A physical mutation would mean a cancerous growth - what I think this is is people's habits being changed as to which finger (or thumb) they use.
Video Game cheats, hints a
It's not evolution! It's common sense! Use your thumbs more, and they'll become stonger, more flexible, and more dexterous. Not evolution, muscles.
First, this isn't really a physical mutation in the thumb, and it certainly isn't to the point where it is getting passed on genetically at this point. Far to earlier to even speculate about that.
Second, evolution on a large time scale has been old school for almost 30 years now. Gould et al came up with the term punctured equilibrium to identify the changes that occur in species over a geologically brief period of time as a result of adaptations. Unfortunately, because of the state of science/biology/evolutionary instructions in today's high schools and even universities, evolution is still taught as a straw man for creationists and ID to blow down. There are exceptions, of course, and I am referring specifically to introductory courses for the non-major. Many high schools don't teach evolution at all due to pressure from the creationists/ID people. And that is why this article so completely goofs.
According to dictionary.com mutation is "An alteration or change, as in nature, form, or quality." This is exactly what the article is talking about: a change in the physical nature of the thumb or, in other words, a physical mutation. Now there is also a distinct meaning of mutation when it comes to genetics, but that is not the meaning that they are using.
That may be true, but it's clumsy and journalistically incompetent to take a common or implied meaning and not explain that you're not using that meaning. The Slashdot headline implies Lamarckism. If you don't mean to imply something, qualify it or use phrasing that doesn't imply it in the first place. Pointing loftily to less common meanings as an excuse for clumsy wordplay is shoddy.
They never said there was a genetic mutation. Their use of the word was perfectly correct.
Mutation
1. The act or process of being altered or changed.
2. An alteration or change, as in nature, form, or quality.
3. Genetics.
1. A change of the DNA sequence within a gene or chromosome of an organism resulting in the creation of a new character or trait not found in the parental type.
2. The process by which such a change occurs in a chromosome, either through an alteration in the nucleotide sequence of the DNA coding for a gene or through a change in the physical arrangement of a chromosome.
3. A mutant.
4. Linguistics. The change that is caused in a sound by its assimilation to another sound, such as umlaut.
But they are talking about a change of the use of the thumb in the article - not a physical change in it.
Interestingly, there could be a physical change.It is known that digits will adapt to their primary use. For people who use their feet in a hand like manner (for reasons including the lack of hands) the toes lengthen and take on a distinctly finger like appearance over time. The same thing happens when a toe is moved to the hand to replace an amputated finger.
Ignoring the nonsensical use of "mutation"... I've noticed that little kids use their thumbs like adults use their forefingers. But the current crop of kids are the first generation that grew up with buttons on EVERYTHING, and were introduced to it right out of the crib. How many kids nowadays have ever seen a rotary dial telephone?
I think it's the natural effect of a transition from gadgets where the forefinger or a thumb-and-fingers grip was the reasonable choice (such as rotary phone dials and rotary controls on TVs, stoves, etc) to gadgets that are button-driven, so any digit will do the job.
If you watch toddlers, you'll notice they try to press buttons with their thumbs far more often than they try to press them with an index finger. To a toddler, everything is for gripping (not for poking) so the gripping member (the thumb) is the natural choice.
If you grow up with buttons on every gadget in the house, it's likely that you'll continue to use your thumb, rather than getting retrained to use an index finger (as getting your thumb damnear ripped off by a phone's rotary dial will enforce in a hurry).
This is no different from the sort of retraining that happens with any interface transition. It just happens to coincide with a physical action that comes more naturally to little kids, hence is easy to continue doing as they grow up.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Quantum Particles arent random at all, we simply dont understand them so they SEEM random.
Wow. It looks like a 19th century classical physicist has invented a time machine, zoomed forward 100 years, and opened a Slashdot account! That would be exciting. I have a sinking feeling, though, that you are not a time traveler from the pre-1920 era, but rather, you're just another scientifically illiterate 21st century creationist.
Physics went through this debate about 80 years ago and decided that you are wrong. Unlike the rolling of dice, etc., where randomness is only apparent because of our ignorance of all the details of the situation, events on a quantum level are truly random. If you're going to say otherwise, you have to provide a mechanism (like little fairies deciding when a nucleus will decay).
But even rolling dice is a bad example of a deterministic process- we figured this out in the eighties. To predict the outcome, you need such exquisite detail of the initial conditions that even minute contributions from quantum processes cannot be ignored.