Manhattan clinics offer special massage to cure “Blackberry thumb”

If you’ve ever spent a few months pecking at your Blackberry or Treo, you’re familiar with the dull ache that emerges in your shoulder blades, and the pinching sensation in your thumbs. It’s gotten so bad now that in Manhattan — ground zero for the dirty-bomb of self-induced workplace stress in America — orthopedic surgeons and chiropractors have begun to offer special “Tech Neck” and “Tech Hand” massages, according to New York magazine.

Graceful Services owner Grace Macnow remembers the first time she got a call asking if it offered BlackBerry finger massage. “My receptionist thought it was something dirty and slammed down the phone.” Now she charges $60 an hour for the service.

My personal favorite PDA-related injury, though, is the “Blackberry Collision” — i.e. when one gormless manager, head-down and utterly engrossed in composing his latest handheld missive, slams into another similarly-engaged employee while traveling at full tilt down the corporate hallway. Wham! Sometimes there’s blood.


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I'm Clive Thompson, a writer on science, technology, and culture. This blog collects bits of offbeat research I'm running into, and musings thereon.

Currently, I'm a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine and a columnist for Wired magazine. I also write for Fast Company and Wired magazine's web site, among other places. Email or AOL IM me (pomeranian99) to say hi or send in something strange!

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Recent Entries

A long German word for “noticing when ads are being customized based on your surfing history”

Gay squid sex

“El Ajedrecista” — an analog chess-playing computer from 1912

Hacking the Model T

“How did you find my site?” and Vannevar Bush’s memex

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a bunch of stuff

May 20, 2011 » 02:28 PM

From Christopher Kennedy’s very droll book “Neitzsche’s Horse”.

July 28, 2010 » 07:35 AM
“Wr” - S

July 06, 2010 » 10:05 AM

My Xbox broke, and I was trying to Google some possible technical solutions, when I noticed that Google appears to be encouraging me to make a typo. I suppose it’s possible that Google’s algorithms know that typing “wont” instead of “won’t” would produce better results.

June 29, 2010 » 05:00 PM

On the other hand, when I tried the test for multitasking, I was pretty abysmal. I performed worse than people who identify themselves as heavy multitaskers, and those who identify as low multitaskers.

June 29, 2010 » 04:58 PM

I finally got around to trying out the interactive “test your distractability and multitasking” page at the New York Times, which they put up alongside their story earlier this month about how computer distractions are eroding our lives. 

According to the test, I guess I have good focus — I’m not very distractable! 

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Collision Detection: A Blog by Clive Thompson