‘Digit’al Revolution: From Index Finger to the Thumb

Experts have been talking about how technology is innovated based on human behaviour, and the cultural behaviour of the people…. But this is no one way street. The use of technology is changing the human behaviour too.

Remember the days of POTS (Plain Old Telephone Systems)…where in you had to actually rotate and dial a number…(I can still remember the kit-kit.kit…tone you get to hear when you release the wheel).. I’m sure like everyone else you would have been using the index finger to dial the number. In case you don’t belong to the POTS generation, ask your parents about the big black telephone covered with the white cloth placed in the corner of a living room…with the bulky telephone directory under it. It was an era when the index finger ruled.

Then came the push-button dial pad telephones….It was usually gifted to you by your rich uncle or cousin coming from ‘Gulf’ on their annual holidays. The late 80’s saw the govt. owned company Bharat Electronics producing the same for mass market (Beetel brand)… Still the index finger ruled…while some adventurous people tried typing out the number with other fingers too…

Today, it is a generation of Mobile phones…with over 400 Million subscribers and growing at a phenomenal rate Y-o-Y it has long outrun the landline phones. With the mobile usage increasing, the use of thumb has increased manifold. In today’s era the thumb rules

A few days back, I tried a quick exercise with a few people around me. I drew a rough sketch of a power switch on a sheet of paper and asked few of the people to switch it on…. Almost all of the younger generation (people who were not exposed to the POTS era of phones) were using their thumb to switch it on….while the few people who are of the earlier generation used their index finger. In fact, some of older generation people too used their thumb to switch it on.

Similar action, I’m told, is found when females blow dry their hair. The younger lot tend to use their thumb to switch on and use the machine, while the older lot use their index finger to switch on and then use the machine.

Today people are thumbing not just on their mobile phones, the Playstations, the Wiis, and other gaming consoles all have active usage of the thumb.

I am sure, in today’s world of Mobile and SMS texting, Ekalavya would have second thoughts about cutting off his thumb as guru dakshina

Santosh

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