Illustration by Cody Angell

Astudy released last week in London reports that the frequent use of electronic gadgets has caused a physical mutation in the hands of many people under the age of 25. A lifetime of tapping away at tiny electronic interfaces has actually caused a conformational change in our bodies. Unlike our un-mutated elders, we use our thumbs with greater agility, ambidextrously, and in many tasks for which the aged rely upon their maladroit index fingers.

To me, this means two things. One, we owe a big thank you to the Nintendo Corporation for helping us mutate. And two, we are now officially cyborgs. We've reached a point in the technological revolution where our physical form is changing to accommodate the electronic gadgetry around us. According to Dr. Sadie Plant of Warwick University's Cybernetic Culture Research Unit, "The relationship between technology and the users of technology is mutual. We are changing each other."

In light of this latest discovery, I suspect more research will follow to show us the ways technology is transforming not only our bodies, but our minds as well. Earlier this week, one of my professors suggested that people who lived 200 years ago probably couldn't learn how to use a computer. Their minds were simply not exercised in the ways of the new world, and it would take years for them to even understand the concept of a thinking machine.

While I wouldn't say they couldn't learn computing, it seems likely that they lacked the tools to make it anything but a serious challenge. As children of the technological age, we tend to underestimate the adaptations our minds and bodies made in our most-formative years, which allow us to function with ease in our electronic environment today.

It is important to note that the hand-mutation research describes a non-inheritable mutation. The changes in our hands have occurred because of physiological development throughout several years of life, and are not coded for in our DNA. Thus, someone with a mutated hand will not have an offspring born with the same mutation, although it may develop with time, given the appropriate environmental factors.

One of the most impressive lessons I think we can learn from the research on humans and technology is to not discount the effects of environmental factors on human development. Genetics has shown us that human beings are constructed according to the same blueprint, with only very slight variation. As we strive for individuality, we've come to emphasize our genetic differences. This has lead to a fear of genetic determinism: Are we limited by the strengths and weaknesses of our genetic makeup? In some ways, yes. But as we learn more about our genetic limitations, we also come to appreciate the strong influence of nongenetic factors, like the intellect of those who came before us.

Are we better off because of the hand mutation? The full extent of our deformity has yet to be researched. For now, we can assume it helps us in a very minor way. We are slightly better equipped to function in our increasingly electronic world. But I use the word "we" too liberally. Not everyone under the age of 25 has the mutation. And, in underdeveloped countries, I suspect it affects virtually no one. Which means, as people in developed countries physiologically unify with our gadgets, those who have little contact with technology are at a greater disadvantage to understand and learn how to use it. And so the gap widens between the rich and the poor.

Renowned physicist Stephen Hawking recently devised a theory cautioning us to be wary of the rapid progress of technological development. He theorized that human beings work on altering our DNA in order to stay ahead of computers. We fear, he says, that computers will eventually outsmart us, because, while we work to make computers more intelligent, we stay the same. It's an intriguing theory, and I see no reason to doubt its evolutionary implications. But I see the future of humans and technology as more synergistic than adversarial. This latest discovery is reason to believe that man and machine will change each other in favorable ways.

But there is still one thing I find troubling. The mutation has arisen not out of evolutionary struggle, but out of an effort to defeat Wario. And so it turns out, after all these years, that video games have done us some good. True, they rot our brains and atrophy our muscles, but the human thumb has never been so fit and flexible. It makes me wonder: What's next to mutate?