Get up, stand up!
Summary Description Simon Vandore wishes away his keyboard and mouse.
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Roullas Top10 Simon Vandore

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Editorial InformationArticle Location
Article Topic Vandore
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Story Group 001105
Post Date 03/11/2000 08:36 AM Status Posted Entered by Simon Vandore on 30/10/2000 01:37 PM


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Content
Introduction
The one big problem with computers is... well, sitting on your arse.

Body
Now that the Internet and videogames are no longer geeky and computers are the primary tool of office workers, most people are spending crazy amounts of time sitting, staring, typing, clicking. The long-term health consequences are grim.
You see, I like exercise. My current appearance may not reflect it, but I value physical fitness. I go for the occasional bike ride involving steep climbs and do a 20 minute hill walk on my trips to and from Newswire, but it's not enough.
I despise gyms, because controlled exercise feels so mechanical and unnatural. Imagine how our ancestors would view it! Stationary, air-conditioned cycling in front of a TV is anathema to someone who loves travelling in the fresh air.
But my shoulders, neck, back, hips, knees and ankles don't like sitting. Muscles and joints need movement. Skin needs regular perspiration to clean out the pores.
As in the past, I could make an effort to cycle more often and go swimming. I could take up soccer again, or increase my social life. I could make a conscious effort to divide work and leisure, devoting less time to sedentary pursuits such as computer games, Net surfing, television and voracious reading.
Trouble is, I find those things mentally stimulating. A long hill climb on a bicycle is often boring, as is swimming 20 laps in a pool. The body gets its workout while the mind drifts. A computer or a book can give the mind a workout, but the body drifts. The answer is obviously variety, but I'm a determined person -- once I start climbing those hills, I don't stop until I've done all of them. Once I start writing an article or playing a game, I don't stop until it's complete.
So this morning I was sitting on my arse with the rest of the Western world, reading my email, when ABC Newsradio interviewed Janusz Hooker, CEO of technology venture capital company Tinshed. Investors should be trying to find the "next next-big-thing" before everyone else, said Hooker. His hot tip was speech recognition technology, which he reckoned was about to boom and make keyboards redundant.
Last week, one of the IT stories doing the rounds was about Sydney's taxi booking lines installing speech recognition systems which could even understand Australian colloquialisms for the affirmative such as 'yip', 'oyrekkin', 'rippa', 'is the Pope a Catholic?' and 'does a bear shit in the woods?'.
Commentators have predicted for a long time that this sort of thing would arrive. However the dictation and control options currently on the market are still no replacement for a keyboard in ordinary circumstances, despite speed breakthroughs delivered by products like Dragon NaturallySpeaking. What if this is about to change?
I don't want to sit on an office chair, as I have done for most of today, a slave to static input devices. At home I tried to remedy this with a wireless keyboard and mouse, but found it was still more convenient to use them in their normal positions. Sometimes I place the keyboard on my lap or switch my office chair for an armchair -- it's like using a variety of handlebar positions when cycling -- but I'd much rather be able to control file transfer from my balcony or pace around the room dictating a story, knowing that it will be accurately reflected on screen.
And I don't like having to sit and play a computer game with a mouse, keyboard or joystick. Some games now offer voice control, but I want even healthier options. When my on-screen persona walks, runs, jumps or ducks, I want to have the option to do the same (perhaps not to the same superhuman extent, but a rough approximation to give me a workout). Sure, the kind of equipment this would require is currently only found in motion capture studios, but it could be adapted for mass production. People already spend fortunes on home exercise equipment -- is this any different?
Imagine a breed of super-fit geeks who write code by day and perform sci-fi acrobatics in their spare rooms at night! It sure beats the gym and it definitely beats the pale, saggy consequences of today's computing. Whether it's speech recognition or motion detection to the rescue, this sedentary Internet age must change.
There's a great cartoon of the evolution of humanity, from the stooped neanderthal to the short medieval peasant, to the upright athlete, to the stooped computer user. I refuse to accept this is our future.
Vandore appears every Friday on Newswire. You can contact Simon Vandore on svandore@acptech.net.


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Bulletin SummaryVandore: Get up, stand up!
Simon Vandore wishes away his keyboard and mouse.

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Vandore: Get up, stand up!

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