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- Hacker News
- There's some private school in the US doing this to reward children for studying (Alpha school I think?), despite it being one of the most unpopular educational policies imaginable — down there with paddling and forced child labor, to great effect.
If you have a computer system for realtime student performance tracking (replacing stressful tests with frequent auto-checked exercises, spaced repetition etc), you can gamify and incentivize the hell out of it, and to a child, $1 a day is a whole lot of money.
by miki123211 - I like reading, and I read a lot. Still, I don't think it's right that a public service encourages reading. People must be free to do what they want in their free time, and this gamification stuff smells of imposing values and habits.
I'm against this idea of indoctrination of the population by a public entity, no matter which is the habit. I'm also against private companies doing this, which governments should focus on regulating instead of copying them.
If reading books is valuable, just as I think it is, people will find its value by trying.
by fedeb95 - I actually kinda like the idea.
The money is so small that I don't think anyone is really reading for the $0.02. But if it gets someone to pick up a book instead of scrolling on their phone, why not?
Maybe they do it for the reward at first, then after a while it just becomes a habit. Kinda like streaks in apps. I don't really care about the streak itself, but sometimes it’s enough to make me do the thing.
If the reward helps get people started, I think that’s pretty cool.
- While books > articles > audiobooks > podcasts > listening to music > TV > short-form content, it's all content consumption in the end, and while that's fine, I think it's a little overhyped.
I prefer to draw the distinction at creating vs doing vs consuming, and focus on balancing the time spent consuming (which is a natural part of enjoying life, but usually people consume way too much) unless it's in the service of one of the other two categories (e.g. consuming articles to learn/inspire the creation of something better or plan a trip to do something, etc.)
by lend000 - Singapore libraries are really annoying for foreigners because they don’t let you use the WiFi.
Thailand at least gives you a 1 hour pass.
Not that anyone asked but my ranking of public libraries in Asia
1/ Taiwan
2/ HK
3/ Thailand
4/ Laos (private libraries are cute, but hot…)
4/ Vietnam (Bring your passport!)
5/ Singapore
I haven’t been to a library in Japan or S Korea. I tried working from a community center in Japan but I couldn’t figure how it works.
by itake - > to build daily reading habits among a phone-first population
Reading is fundamental.
EDIT: Other skills and habits that you can then build on reading: critical thinking, reasoning, detection and handling own biases, numeracy, financial literacy, and more. All these dimensions are manipulated via phones and the apps on them, so you need a firewall.
Also: writing. Cursive writing.
by andsoitis - The headline makes it seem more monetary than it actually is.
https://www.read.gov.sg/join-the-readsg-challenge
It seems like turning points into money is just a happens to exist sort of mechanic. Enough to write a headline that they are technically "paying you". The real mechanics are much more typical gamification. Like earning xp, streaks, leaderboards, limited edition goodies at events, prize draws, collective goals.
The strict money payout is S$0.02 per 15 minutes at most once a day. Obviously if you were doing this it would be more for the rest of the dopamine then hoping to buy a candy bar after like 50 days.
by kingstnap - I read a lot, and I own a lot of physical books, but I almost never actually read physical books anymore. I'm one of the happy few that used my Kindle for more than a week after getting it as a gift.
I find that reading on an ereader is many times easier for me, primarily because I can make the text gigantic and I don't lose track of my place on the page nearly as often. I'm not dyslexic (I've been tested), but I do think that there's some issue with my brain where if the text is small I really can't follow it. On all my computers the text is gigantic and even then I will click and highlight text as I'm reading so don't lose place. I would love to be paid to read but I don't think I'd love to be paid to read physical books.
I remember my grandmother was wholly unconvinced that my Kindle was a different thing than an iPad or a Game Boy, and that it was not "real" reading, for whatever reason.
by tombert