YHK - yet another hacker news clone

Singapore Is Paying People to Put Down Their Phones and Read Books

69 points geox 1 hour ago 19 comments

itake 1 hour ago | parent

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.

Onavo 36 minutes ago | parent

It's not limited to their libraries. All of their public facilities are like this. Even their public swimming pools (not allowed to use them if you are a visitor, their digital ticketing system requires the local equivalent of a SSN). The official excuse is that it's tax payer subsidized.

It's very much a classist country where you position in society is determined by your immigration status. Everything there is tiered based on whether you are a "citizen" (first class), permanent resident (second class), and you are in a permanent out group if you are not in the above two classes. And if you are a foreigner, whether you are a white "expat" or a Dubai -style indenture servant migrant worker. Valley tech bros are obsessed with that country but all that glitters is not gold.

analog8374 1 hour ago | parent

They should be paying them to meditate. That would be the more healthful and revolutionary course.

Regular daily intellectual concentration is much the same be it game, book or reddit. And it makes you crazy. You withdraw from reality.

kingstnap 46 minutes ago | parent

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.

andsoitis 45 minutes ago | parent

Reading is fundamental.

aduwah 39 minutes ago | parent

You being downvoted is just sad

andsoitis 38 minutes ago | parent

The library is open.

yipinwong 41 minutes ago | parent

For me it's not the phone that's stopping me from reading books but my computer, on which I play games, and browse, and do private stuff.

Where I live, electricity price is so ridiculous, I leave my PC off for 3 to 5 hours a day.

You get bored after 5 minutes. This is the best time to open your book and read.

----

Same idea applies for the phone. Just leave it off.

wbobeirne 36 minutes ago | parent

It's difficult to turn your phone off if you have a spouse or children or other dependents who you can't drop communication with for hours at a time. But it's helpful to strip it down to the essentials so it doesn't double as an entertainment device.

kibwen 14 minutes ago | parent

The need to be instantly reachable at a moment's notice is a modern anxiety that we successfully lived without until the mass penetration of cell phones 20 years ago. Your spouse and children will manage without being able to text you for a few hours, just like spouses and children did for the first 100,000 years of humans history.

andrepd 2 minutes ago | parent

That's ridiculous. We have managed without electricity or antibiotics for 100,000 years too. Are you keen on reading by candlelight or dying of preventable infections?

Instant messaging and calling is extremely valuable. Algorithmic social media is extremely noxious. Unfortunately, they both live on the same device.

devin 13 minutes ago | parent

To be sure, you absolutely can do this. I did it all the time as a kid. Nothing bad happened from being out of constant communication for hours.

yipinwong 6 minutes ago | parent

You are focusing on things that never happened or never will happen.

Phone is not the only communication you need for your kids or spouse.

downut 3 minutes ago | parent

It is in actual fact not difficult to "drop communication with for hours at a time". This was the human norm for millenia, up to a decade or so ago. And given the toxic side effects of all this communication it's probably going to have to be worked out again.

We raised a child with the principle that "No News is Good News". She turned out great! And she lives that way still. That constant level of screen stimulation is strictly not necessary for family happiness, and I think you all who think so have not really internalized what it means for a child to learn responsibility.

See also free-range kids, and the social insanity that causes kids/parents to get arrested for eg playing in a park alone. There's a bunch of mental illness out there, and the screens are big reason why.

Oh right. My beautiful daughter reads books constantly. Weird that, huh.

tombert 39 minutes ago | parent

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.

mulderc 32 minutes ago | parent

One thing I do with my students is show them how to adjust text size and have them try out larger sizes. I think a surprisingly large number of people have never even attempted to change the text size on their devices and many can benefit from something different than the defaults.

walt_grata 23 minutes ago | parent

I swap between kindle and audible daily. The syncing is generally good, byt i have had issues with some books.

This alone has caused my reading to skyrocket. I swear i do 1-2 books a week this way

matwood 21 minutes ago | parent

I don't have a Kindle, but I've been reading books exclusively on my phone since I had a 3gs IIRC. I've increased the text size over the years and love having the 2-3 books I'm typically reading at once readily available.

DANmode 21 minutes ago | parent

Yes, but without Pizza Hut involved, do they even stand a chance?