'Phonetoms'
BlackBerry addicts are now questioning their sanity after experiencing "phantom vibrations" – or "phonetoms" as one user dubbed the mysterious syndrome – from their wireless email devices. The curious condition has yet to be acknowledged by the medical community, but that didn't stop the Associated Press from reporting on it, giving voice to millions of users who are apparently ‘suffering’ in silence from the affliction.
With about 100 emails beamed to his BlackBerry every day, Blackberry user Carmi Levy says the hip that holds his device buzzes so often that sometimes he swears he feels the familiar sensation despite a lack of new messages in his inbox.
"Sometimes I'll take it out and there's nothing there," said Levy, the senior vice president of strategic consulting for Toronto-based AR Communications Inc. "I'll have no idea what just happened. So I just put it away until it starts vibrating again."
One Ontario university researcher, who asked to remain anonymous, perhaps for fear of offending his BlackBerry-obsessed colleagues, compared the response of BlackBerry users' to that of the dogs studied by Russian scientist Ivan Pavlov.
Pavlov won a Nobel Prize in 1904 for his research into conditioned responses.
That included experiments with dogs in which a bell would be rung before the animals were given food. Eventually, the dogs could be made to salivate by simply ringing the bell.
"Beyond that off-the-top-of-my-head suggestion, twisted to reflect the `maybe-they-need-me' psychology that becomes trained with BlackBerry usage, I don't think I've got anything else to suggest," the researcher said. Others argued the culprit was an increasingly intimate relationship between people and technology.
Whatever the cause, the affliction was a hot topic of discussion this week on several technology forums, which at times resemble online support groups.
"I definitely feel this. All the time," wrote one BlackBerry user on Gizmodo.com, a Web site devoted to gadgets. "It's bizarre...the muscles in my leg have learned to twitch at the same frequency that my phone vibrates at. Freaks me out."
Another post was more philosophical. It read: "Put me in the camp of `thank God I'm not alone.'"
Agent Edward here..... I've posted this because i've had this phantom leg twitching for years with my non-Blackberry mobile phones and like that last poster in the article, I fell happy this is happeneing with other people! What's the solution to this peculiar affliction? Getting rid of your Blackberry and mobile phones.
I'll wait until they think of a better solution!
BlackBerry addicts are now questioning their sanity after experiencing "phantom vibrations" – or "phonetoms" as one user dubbed the mysterious syndrome – from their wireless email devices. The curious condition has yet to be acknowledged by the medical community, but that didn't stop the Associated Press from reporting on it, giving voice to millions of users who are apparently ‘suffering’ in silence from the affliction.
With about 100 emails beamed to his BlackBerry every day, Blackberry user Carmi Levy says the hip that holds his device buzzes so often that sometimes he swears he feels the familiar sensation despite a lack of new messages in his inbox.
"Sometimes I'll take it out and there's nothing there," said Levy, the senior vice president of strategic consulting for Toronto-based AR Communications Inc. "I'll have no idea what just happened. So I just put it away until it starts vibrating again."
One Ontario university researcher, who asked to remain anonymous, perhaps for fear of offending his BlackBerry-obsessed colleagues, compared the response of BlackBerry users' to that of the dogs studied by Russian scientist Ivan Pavlov.
Pavlov won a Nobel Prize in 1904 for his research into conditioned responses.
That included experiments with dogs in which a bell would be rung before the animals were given food. Eventually, the dogs could be made to salivate by simply ringing the bell.
"Beyond that off-the-top-of-my-head suggestion, twisted to reflect the `maybe-they-need-me' psychology that becomes trained with BlackBerry usage, I don't think I've got anything else to suggest," the researcher said. Others argued the culprit was an increasingly intimate relationship between people and technology.
Whatever the cause, the affliction was a hot topic of discussion this week on several technology forums, which at times resemble online support groups.
"I definitely feel this. All the time," wrote one BlackBerry user on Gizmodo.com, a Web site devoted to gadgets. "It's bizarre...the muscles in my leg have learned to twitch at the same frequency that my phone vibrates at. Freaks me out."
Another post was more philosophical. It read: "Put me in the camp of `thank God I'm not alone.'"
Agent Edward here..... I've posted this because i've had this phantom leg twitching for years with my non-Blackberry mobile phones and like that last poster in the article, I fell happy this is happeneing with other people! What's the solution to this peculiar affliction? Getting rid of your Blackberry and mobile phones.
I'll wait until they think of a better solution!
