TED Radio Hour - Body Electric Part 2: When Human Met Desk

Episode Date: October 10, 2023

In part two: host Manoush Zomorodi delves into how we met and fell hard for the personal computer—and why we continue to have this committed, yet tortuous relationship. We hear from historian Laine Nooney on how the computer revolution forever changed the way we use our bodies at work, at school and at home. Manoush also visits the Exercise Testing Laboratory at Columbia University Medical Center where researchers collect data on how her body responds to a day of sitting compared to a day of constant movement breaks.Click here to find out more about the project: npr.org/bodyelectricAre you signed up for Columbia's study, or following along with the series? We want to hear your thoughts! Send us a voice memo at [e-mail]. Talk to us on Instagram @ManoushZ, and on Facebook @tedradiohour.See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

Hello and welcome to episode two of Body Electric. So I recently participated in a lab study that required me to sit for eight hours straight working on my laptop. Yeah, just another day at the office for a lot of us. I'm going to be sitting for the entirety of your visit. But what was different about this was that while I was working, those Columbia University researchers you met in episode one were monitoring. my every move, well, not just my movement, also my heart rate. Glucose levels, blood pressure.

And I was super curious. What was happening inside my body while I sat on my butt for all that time? Because I have been trying to get off of it a lot more over the past couple of years. Like a lot of people, I have struggled with my workout routine. I used to go to the gym in the mornings, kill it at boot camp, and then sit for eight hours straight at my desk. But when the pandemic happened, I just started walking a lot. Coincidentally, in 2020, my local gym collapsed. Like, seriously, the entire building fell down.

No one was hurt. But it made me think, all right, that's a sign. I'm going to keep walking about five miles a day and see if that is enough to keep me healthy. Because honestly, this feels manageable, like something I could do into my 80s, maybe even my 90s crossed fingers. And then I read about those findings from Columbia that the best way to counteract a sedentary lifestyle is with really regular, really short, easy strolls throughout the day. I figured, okay, those findings would definitely apply to the old Manusche, the one who didn't move from 9 to 5. But they're not going to make much of a difference for the new Minutes. Manusche, the one who's been walking more the last few years, will they?

I'm Manus Shumerooney, and this is NPR's special series, Body Electric, an investigation into the relationship between our technology and our bodies. And on this episode, when human met dusk. All right, so back at the lab, I embarked on a full day of sitting. And at first, I got to admit, I was pretty excited to get a lot. lot done. I am 14 minutes in an entire day of sitting. Right now, I'm actually kind of psyched. I've already plowed through a bunch of emails and it's quiet here and no one is interrupting me. But things went downhill surprisingly quickly. Okay, I've been sitting here not moving for 63 minutes now.

I don't know why I'm so hungry. I'm like, God. Right now I'm feeling really, mushy-headed. I just feel like I can't concentrate. I am worried and I have many, many hours to go. I finished off my eight hours, feeling utterly exhausted and wondering, how did we get to the point where we humans orient all of our attention and our anatomy around this piece of hardware? Because if you think about it too hard, it feels like madness. So, when we come back, a love story. the one behind the information age, how we met and fell hard for the personal computer,

and why we continue to have this committed but torturous relationship. The personal computer was a very charismatic object to attach dreams and needs and necessities to. That's coming up. Stick with us. Okay, so the reason why most of us sit on our butts all day is because we interact with the screen for a living. In fact, a record 92% of jobs now require digital skills, and the majority of all jobs are sedentary. So let's go back to how it all started. My favorite decade, the 80s. When computers entered offices in mass.

This is Lane Nooney. I'm a computer and video game historian in the Media Studies Department at New York University. Lane's new book is called The Apple II Age, How the Computer became personal. But I discovered Lane's work after reading an article they wrote called How the Personal Computer Broke the Human Body. And the piece just felt kind of subversive. I think that's a nice way of putting it. We have a very limited set of narratives for talking about the history of technology, and I think especially the history of computing. In your vice article, you wrote that the so-called computer revolution brought with it a way.

world of pain, previously unknown to humankind. And I underlined that sentence numerous times. Tell me what you mean by a world of pain. Yeah. I've lived with various forms of computer pain, pretty extensive computer pain for about 20 years, and I was only able to get an accurate diagnosis for the source of that a couple years ago. And so this is a thing that I have been negotiating and dealing with my entire adult life. There was really no precedent for the bodily posture a computer demanded you occupy prior to that. You can think of television viewing in this regard, right? There's many different distances, many different postures.

You're not trying to interact or manipulate information on that screen. What computing did was combine a whole bunch of stress postures into one media interaction. So there's the extended sitting. There's the use of the keyboard, which causes all sorts of stress. in the wrists, the hands, the fingers, the elbows. There's the posture of sitting, which has a whole kind of connection of things that can do between the back, the shoulders, the neck, as well as like the hips, depending on the chair. And then you're also maintaining a very specific head posture by looking at the screen.

Take us back and remind us when, I think a lot of people listening, don't even remember a time before there were computers everywhere. Yeah, absolutely. So when we're looking at when something that we would identify as a personal computer, so when I say that, I mean a desktop computer. These begin entering workplaces in various forms in the 1970s, but they really accelerate in the 1980s. In the beginning, the people who worked with computers were considered magicians. But digital took the mystery out of computers. And the first places that a lot of these systems were put into was around administrative and pink-collar labor. And tied into our IBM mid-range computer,

you can check calendars, get phone lists, even send instant memos. So computers were seen as tools of office automation. And so the first people who had to use them were often female office workers. It wasn't the executive or the managerial class that was first interested in having computers in their offices. These were systems and software that were doled out first to the people who worked often at the lowest rung of work that involved things like data entry. From around $1,099, it's leaving the future of typewriters up in the air.

Computing comes into the home pretty slowly, beginning in the late 70s, picks up a bit in the 1980s, but something that's studying the early years of personal computing indicated to me was that this was not a story of people suddenly looking at a computer and saying, oh my God, I have to have one. It's a story of the tremendous effort it took to convince people to use computers. Apple Computer will introduce Macintosh. Until the point that computers were so embedded in our workplaces, in our schools, and in our domestic lives that we couldn't get out of it. So about 25 years ago, half of all U.S. households owned a computer.

And then like around 2005, laptop sales actually started exceeding desktop sales. And the laptop, I mean, it must have brought in a whole other set of computer-related pain. Yeah. Laptops are even worse. Like if you think a desktop computer is bad, you're literally talking about a device where your keyboard and your monitor are basically on the same plane. Yeah.

You know, and so the turning down of the head is much more pronounced on a laptop. There's really no accommodation for anything resembling an ergonomic posture for the keyboard. And so it's not like any of this stuff has ever gotten better as computing has, quote, unquote, innovated. And in some cases, I would say it's gotten quite worse. I think a lot of us don't realize how much pain we live in because of our interactions with computing. We don't remember a time before this kind of stress on the body. The tech world, though, there are some folks. They are saying that augmented reality, virtual reality, headsets, that is going to mean that we use our body differently in the future, that we won't be hunched over a computer in, say, five or ten years.

What do you think? I do think a lot of the fantasy around VR, AR, particularly around goggles or headsets, is about trying to. kind of remove the computer as an object from the center of things. But it's also quite difficult because there's a lot of fine, detailed manipulation that kind of has to, that is now embedded as part of our workflows. And trying to rethink how we interact with that in a way that is actually ergonomically sustainable is very challenging. And maybe in a bigger sense, it points to the fact that labor itself is fundamentally

like not very interested in these questions. Yeah. There are some people who are like, look, it's not the computers that's the problem. It's the sedentary lifestyle. It's the sitting on your butt for multiple hours a day. And the solution is simple. Just take breaks. Look into the distance. The 2020-20-20 rule. Get up and walk around every so often. You know, make sure your smart watch pings you that it's time to stand up. Is that more of the answer just to like humans take control? your body, move it more. So, I mean, obviously, yes, getting up and walking around is important. Getting up and stretching your neck and, you know, looking out a window is important. But really what those tasks are about, if you want to be really cynical, it's about sustaining your ability to perform at the computer, right? It's like, how do we give you little tasks and opportunities that aren't too obtrusive,

and don't take up too much time away from the paid work you're supposed to be doing for your employer that allow you to actually stay at the computer longer, right? And so on the one hand, I do all that stuff. So I have 25 minutes on, and my five minutes off, I'm doing laps around my office. Like, this is a thing I'm known for. They're like, oh, okay, there goes lane again, right? You know, I walk past the same door, like six times. and you know.

And you've just like, your colleagues, they're like, this is Lane's thing, and they accept that this is what you do. Yes, yes. Interesting. So, yeah, they can tell when I'm on my break, right? Because one, there's the soft sound of a clock of a timer ticking in the background. And I'm pacing past people's open doors, right, every 25 minutes. Why do you think they don't join you? Yeah, that's a great question.

I don't know why they don't go on my walks with me. I mean, I know why I fail to do what I should do like you're describing is because I'm in the zone. Yeah, right? We all live in these contradictions, right? I can't get out of this situation. And yeah, I do my five-minute walks every 25 minutes because I love my job too and I need to be able to show up for it. But at the end of the day, I think it's important for me to remember when my work is at its highest threshold, my body pain is just like not relenting. It really does feel like I go to work and then I come home and I try to rehabilitate my body so that I can go to work again. And that is a truth about how labor works. And we should remember that when we feel pain in our neck or our wrists or our arms, that that pain is a historical legacy of a sort.

And it actually has to do with things that are way, way bigger. than you. And yeah, I just, you know, I like to have little historical practices that, like, keep me in that mindset, right? Like, you know, it's like good and healthy to not sit there and forget that the reason this feels like it sucks is because no one cared whether or not it sucked when they first designed these things and brought them into workplaces and made them the center of how many workplaces have to function. Oh, man. The historical mindset that Lane put me in makes me want to close my laptop, stop thinking about late capitalism, and take a nap. But also, I have two kids and a mortgage, and I am super lucky that I really like my job.

Someday I would like to write another book, too. But the thought of all the laptop sitting time it would require fills me with dread. Lane is clearly onto something, a compromise with walking every 25 minutes. a practice that they came up with with their physical therapist, and Lane had no idea it's being tested in a lab at Columbia. When we come back, we'll go back to that lab at Columbia to find out exactly how walking snacks affect our metabolism and mood.

It seems so counterintuitive to workplace culture, but your body needs breaks, your mind needs breaks. A fresher mind is a productive mind. Okay. Day two, really hoping today feels a bit better. I'm going to be moving today. And just like that, I was back at Columbia University Medical Center's exercise testing lab. I'm going to be walking for five minutes every half hour, which meant that 25 minutes into my first hour of working on my laptop.

I'm going to go ahead and go ahead and start a treadmill. That little cycle of work for 25 minutes, walk for five. repeated itself all day long. What we call a stroll in the park. Yep, feels good. So far, the study has found that this is the best way, easiest way, to offset the harms of sitting and typing for hours. It's 10 o'clock. It's time for another walk.

I got a few things done, not a ton, but a few things. At one point, Keith Diaz, the head of the study, who you heard in episode one, came into check on me. Hey! How are you? Am I allowed to get up to say hi? No. Probably not, right? No, you have to continue sitting.

Finally, 5 p.m. was in sight. Hey, this is exciting. I'm on the treadmill. For the last time today, two miles an hour. I definitely felt better than the first day, but I'm very curious to hear what the data say. A couple days later, we got Keith on Zoom. Okay, so now we get to the fun part.

You have had the chance to review my data from these two days. I am dying to know what did you find? Yeah, so let's get into and dig into, well, how did your body respond? And we'll start with your blood sugar levels. So what we found is when you were taking those movement breaks every half hour, across the whole day, your blood sugar levels were 42% lower. 42%? Yes.

So we're talking like, you almost cut your brain. blood sugar levels in half. Whoa. And this is very similar to had we, if you were somebody who was pre-diabetic or diabetic and we started thinking about should we put you a medication, this is the kind of reductions you'd expect to see. So, I mean, these are powerful effects. Yeah. And does that have any effect on mood, do you think, as well? Absolutely. So for your, when you sat, on day one all day, your mood just got progressively worse. There was more anxiety. You were reporting feeling like more grouchy, more irritable. And you had more depressive symptoms reported.

The biggest driver of your change in mood was you reporting feeling way more fatigued. Yeah. And there was, you were reported not being able to concentrate as well. by the end. And that's really interesting that you didn't see that on the day that you were moving and taking those walking breaks. Your mood stayed the same

from when you started to when you finished. So you felt you were less anxious compared to when you sat all day. You were less depressed. You were far less fatigued. And you reported feeling energized at the end of the day, which is surprising because

I mean, we asked you to walk a ton. So I am curious, is how have I compared to other people in your study? You have, I think, pretty much aligned with what we've been finding. You know, in our original study, we found that blood sugar levels decreased by 60%. So you were at 42%, right? Not too far off. I mean, but you still have a sizable reduction.

The blood pressure reduction, which we didn't mention yet, so in our previous study, we found that it reduced blood pressure by four to five. five points and you were right there. So your blood pressure was five points lower across the day. Huh. When you walked compared to the sitting. And then your mood, the same thing, we keep finding that people feel more energized and less fatigued and they're just in overall, just generally we're feeling better. And you were right there again. Yeah. But it's interesting to me, like, it's only when you, you know, really show the data that it's not only long.

long-term effects. But it's, what you're saying is there are short-term reasons to do this as well. And that might be a motivating factor to keep it up. Yeah. You know, I think that's probably the, maybe the more important finding. You know, like we call it the hedonistic theory that people do things that make them feel better. And, well, here's something that does make you feel better. Would you be more likely to repeat it again? Absolutely. And so, you know, I think there's a push towards like getting people to change behaviors, harnessing those immediate effects. Yeah. But we need that reflection, don't we? We need to stop for a minute and think about that. Yeah. And that's the thing. I think it seems so counterintuitive to workplace culture.

Yeah. But it just, it makes sense, right? That like your body needs breaks, your mind needs breaks. A fresher mind is a productive mind. So let's talk about taking these findings, putting them out into the wild. So I keep thinking about it. I feel conflicted. A lot of people ignore their Apple Watch telling them to stand. How much more would they want to ignore, you know, the timer going off and saying it's time for you to move for five minutes?

I mean, it seems like people are like, I take breaks. I take breaks to check my personal email to play a game to look at it. Instagram, but, you know, this is this is a bigger ask. You bring up what is probably my biggest concern is I still wrestle with how realistic this is. Yeah. I want to hear like what makes this not realistic? What are the challenges? Like, that's what we want to find out.

Okay, so maybe you are already signed up to give this project a whirl for the next few weeks. Maybe you even got your coworkers or your friends or your mom to sign up to. But even if you aren't signed up, you can follow along during the whole six-part series. And as you go about the next week, just notice. Notice how long you sit between breaks. One hour? Three hours? Until your left leg falls asleep?

Or your bladder feels like it's going to explode? What are your habits? Because sometimes we get into ruts and we don't even realize it. Let us know what you observe. Email us. send us a voice memo. We are at bodyelectric at npr.org. Or tell me on Instagram, I'm at Manushe Z or on Facebook at TED Radio Hour. Speaking of Ted Radio Hour, that is where you will find Body Electric, episode three in the feed on Tuesday. We are delving into the mystery of why so many kids are going near-sided.

And we've got the story of an optometrist whose colleagues at Berkeley didn't believe she, could treat myopia. I actually volunteered my Sunday time to get the clinic going. You worked for free? Yes, for multiple years. She's so cool. You got to hear her story. On the TED Radio Hour feed or at npr.org slash body electric. Body electric was produced by Katie Montalione and edited by Sana's Mesquenpour with production support from Rachel Faulkner White. Original music by David Herman. Our audio engineer was Quasi Lee. Our fact checker was Chloe Weiner.

We got all kinds of support from Anya Grunman, Lauren Gonzalez, Lindsay McKenna, Yolanda Sangueni, Beth Donovan, Irene Noguchi, Julia Carney, and Fiona Giron. I'm Anush Zamorodi, and you've been listening to Body Electric from NPR.