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.
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.
Amazon has sold an estimated 70 million Kindle readers.
Ebook sales are at least 20% of book sales.
I read 60+ books a year. Almost all on my Kindle. My partner and my sister are similar. I know of one person who has bought a Kindle and not used it much.
Australians alone are reading 1.6 billion pages a month on Kindles.
I didn't read OP's remark as "few people make long use out of e-readers," but rather "many more people have e-readers and don't use them," which I'm willing to believe but don't have any evidence of. At the very least it's likely to reflect the case with physical books. The people who don't read you don't hear as much from.
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.
First was when I go the Kindle I realized I could make the text as big as I wanted so I would do that, as stated before.
Another time is when I wanted an external monitor and I bought a big TV because it was much cheaper. Because the TV was bigger the text was also bigger, and I realized how much easier it was for me to work.
I think I used to feel like there was a "coolness" factor to keeping the text small. I don't know why I thought that, but I think what's much cooler than having lots of small text is actually being able to read and understand the text on the screen.
Now I have no desire to impress anyone, and I keep my text in the browser at like 200%.
For me it's not coolness it's just context, 16:9 is too short to fit enough lines and scrolling and jumping is as annoying as tabbing in and out.
This is also one problem with ereaders for me, especially for anything technical. With paper when the textbook says refer to fig 13.2 or we covered this in section 4.3 I can just flip to that page with my fingers as a bookmark, read it, and go right back. Just not as tactile on computers. Even if you did like lsp assisted jumping all over the place you quickly forget what the heck was going on and where you came in from.
Of course maybe someone will come and correct me but this is just what I experience. It's still better flipping pages for technical stuff. It's like scribbling a DJ disc, imagine doing that with a mouse or keyboard. It's just… different.
> primarily because I can make the text gigantic and I don't lose track of my place on the page nearly as often... where if the text is small I really can't follow it. On all my computers the text is gigantic
+1 I prefer the Kindle for the exact same reasons.
I used to read a lot of physical books. But I can't tolerate physical books after I started reading on the Kindle, especially books with tiny text.
Plus it is easier to keep a better posture with the Kindle.
But it still does not feel so good to buy Kindle ebooks. Somehow purchasing physical books seems more justifiable.
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.
What’s annoying is when you want to look back at something earlier in the book. Then you have to use the clunky search and hope you don’t lose your current place.
That's the only issue I have with ebooks and the reason why I would never read a technical / reference book on it where you want to jump around and have your fingers in some pages to flip back and forth.
KOReader has bookmark support; if I need to go back a few pages (or use the search), I'll just set a bookmark for my current place so I can easily jump back.
The constraint here is the e-ink refresh rate. That constraint does not exist on regular screens, which is why I'm surprised neither mobile reader apps or even desktop software takes purposeful advantage of it: fast scrolling back with fine, per-page control, keeping page in-place and zero perceptible latency rendering full page. With a finger drag or click&drag movement, this can easily be even faster than with paper books.
I know this works because I've seen it with some PDF readers on desktop in the past, when I lucked into a combination of lightweight document and right "fit page to display" scaling. And, of course, this works natively in browsers with PgUp/PgDown, but only on the few remaining websites that haven't been thoroughly shittified (no "en-" there on purpose) with JavaScript and excessive styling.
When you go back in a physical book, you also put a bookmark (either an actual bookmark or one of your finger) to be able to resume reading where you were, no?
Ha, no, I actually don't talk to that grandmother anymore and probably never will again since she's extremely racist and doesn't like my (Hispanic) wife. I wouldn't buy her gifts at the best of times.
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.
Systems like this are not new. When I was in elementary school in the US Midwest, we had a program called accelerated reader, (AR), where you could take tests about books and get points. The longer the book, the more the points. You could redeem the points for candy.
Anyway I was banned from AR in the 5th grade because I learned you could sort the book list by points awarded, so I wrote down the list of most valuable books and checked them out from the library. I convinced a 2 friends to help, one would take the test and write down the questions and then someone else would read the book to get the answers and share them. We ended up racking up like way more points than anyone else and the teachers called out and made us explain.
My middle school had a reading program where the monthly winner would get a book of their choice from the scholastic catalog. This was a very enticing prize to a poor, voracious reader like me.
After winning my way through the Hobbit/LOTR series, they changed the rules specifically for me to require oral exams on each of the books I was reading, and later book reports. I was eventually banned completely so there could be an actual competition.
In fourth grade, I went to the library and noticed a book with a tripod on the cover blasting people with a heat ray. Of course I checked it out. I didn't know what scifi was at the time, and had never heard of HG Wells. Anyhow, I loved every word in the book, and devoured scifi ever since.
Another seminal book for me was Lord of the Rings, which I read in 6th grade.
You basically discovered the exploit in gamified reading before gamification had a name. I wonder how many kids today would optimize the points system instead of actually reading the books.
Ha I also got suspected of this but I actually just read the books. Three musketeers and shogun was particularly lots of points as well as the Harry Potter books.
I had so many points that even though I stopped reading books on the list in 6th (I got into manga). I still placed 1st in my school until the last semester of 8th because of my point lead.
> 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.
Is there any evidence that handwriting in cursive is better than handwriting normally? The Van der Meer study only compared cursive to typing or drawing, not handwriting.
It's rather suspicious to leave normal handwriting out of the study, and makes me suspect bad faith.
Anecdotally my kids wrote a fair bit before they were forced to do “joined up writing”. Since then they have stopped almost entirely and what little they do write is far less legible than before.
If there is one thing I would ban from education it’s this 17th century torture device.
How does this work? In school if they’re forced to write in cursive surely they still have to write the same amount? And if it’s writing in their spare time that has reduced they can write non-cursive so that shouldn’t be a blocker.
Stating a truth is not adding to the conversation though. A little sad, sure, but grandparent's comment is barely even a building block to kick off a wider conversation, let alone thoughtful or additive on its own.
Maybe it doesn't deserve to be on the bottom, dead, but something this basic certainly doesn't deserve to be showered in upvotes
They also charge a pretty hefty membership fee if you’re not at least a PR, and charge for physical book reservations. It was pretty shocking for me after the California library system.
And I’m a taxpayer.
Net, I pay more taxes than a citizen with the same income.
For libraries, does it really matter who pays taxes and who doesn’t? Seems like it’s a public good that should be available regardless of ability to pay.
> And I’m a taxpayer. Net, I pay more taxes than a citizen with the same income.
Imagine being so capitalist/money-pilled it entitles you to greater rights than citizens. The citizens have made sacrifices for their country so people like you could work in it at top dollar. Don't ever forget that.
Why should library let ANYONE use the Wi-Fi? I am probabky old school when I think people go to library to rent the books and that should be the main purpose of the library, not provide some free co-working space for cheapskates.
Sadly Prague libraries provide free Wi-Fi which is at least in one branch I frequent abused by loud kids playing videogames on their phones.
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.
> It's very much a classist country where you position in society is determined by your immigration status.
Tell me, which country does not prioritize it's citizens first?
Considering that at least the males of the country are forced to serve in the army in their primes, most of them unwillingly, I think you migrants got the better end of the deal.
> 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.
There's a FAQ specifically addressing this [1]:
> If you do not have Singpass, you may still approach our pool or gym staff to buy single-entry passes.
Citizens are conscripted into the military. They spend two years at the prime of their youth in the army getting paid almost nothing. And after that two years is over, for the next 10 years or so, they have to go back to reservist military training for several weeks annually.
They also have to pass the annual military fitness test otherwise they will have to go back to the military to do further physical training in the evenings for weeks even if they have a job. Throughout their 20s and early 30s, most of them cannot even have long hair due to this military duty. Penalty of avoidance is military prison of 3 years. When they go overseas for work or other reasons for longer period of time, they need to apply for an exit permit from the military like a leash. When they go overseas for short periods of time, they still have to notify their military unit first.
People die or get injured all the time in the army during their conscription period.
And then you have foreigners coming over and complaining they are not getting subsidized services when they also pay tax.
Why don't you first talk about the responsibilities of these "first class" citizens before talking about their privileges.
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.
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.)
No, it is not all just ‘content’ which is roughly the same and can be consumed like a snack. That’s a word used by people who think thoughts, feelings and stories are just carriers for advertising and selling you things.
Words matter, don’t take your word choice from ad factories instagram which popularised this term.
Reading (I won’t say consuming) a good book can stay with you forever. People from 2000 years ago can speak to you in their own voice from behind the grave. And you have the audacity to call it content and compare it to cat videos and call it ‘overhyped’?
Reading a book from 2000 years ago is not the same class as reading a recently published modern romance fiction. The latter is basically consumed like a snack.
On days when I am too lazy to be productive or be “creating” something, I sometimes take out my old Harry Potter collection and read for two straight hours. I don’t really feel that’s meaningfully different from watching online videos for two straight hours. It is indeed just consumption. And Harry Potter series is in fact one of the better ones among contemporary literature.
Reading is the least stimulating than other forms of "content" mediums.
Reading about a spell duel is neurologically (and physically) going to be a very different experience than watching flashing colours on screen with loud blasts.
The visualisation of the world printed in words is more active than having it painted on screen for you.
I struggle to read, the last fiction I read was now 8 years ago but the value of it is not lost on me...
Although I can't personally imagine re-reading YA lit, it still requires you to use huge amounts of grammar, vocabulary, and cultural knowledge in a seamless automatic way. To imagine an alternate world, people, and culture, while your eyes scan constantly across page after page invisible to your captured mind.
Those are the same language tools you need to use to create and evaluate your own writing. You're using a mental tool at a high level, even if it's not Ulysses (or Homer's Odyssey). This is fundamentally different from passively viewing cat videos, or thirst traps, which may well not involve language at all.
A 2 year old can be entertained by short form video, but can not even sound out a single word of a book.
I didn't say it was all roughly the same or that you shouldn't do it, but it's obviously still consumption. If nobody ever consumed, there would be less value in creating art. Like all things in life, it should be done in moderation and balanced with creative activities.
I find the words consumption and content problematic. They encourage you to look at the world in a certain way. What would happen to your world view if you step outside the confines of those words, defined by advertisers who don't care about quality but instead measure clicks, engagement and profits and have encouraged the worst sort of 'content' to thrive (short form videos with very little substance)?
Most good art or writing requires engagement from the reader and something is created in engaging with it, something new that exists between the original work and the world of the reader. So I fundamentally disagree with the framing that reading is a passive activity and requires no creativity or engagement, or that creating is fundamentally different from engaging with the creations of others.
I use a similar heuristic, but I think what we "do" for leisure is still consumptive, albeit an active sort. Reading, for it's part, exercises cognition better than something like TV.
I rank listening to music way above audiobooks and podcasts. Music is a revelation.
Interesting. Singapore certainly tries many things to nudge their citizens to a better life. I also recall from a documentary I watched that they have a system where you get shopping vouchers for logging certain sports activities and similar things (I think there was also some incentive system for healthy food).
>Paying People to Put Down Their Phones and Read Books
Of course what people are doing when staring at there phones is also reading about 80% of the time. It's more about the quality of the reading I guess.
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.
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.
20 years ago I would be reachable at work on my desk phone. I’d be reachable at home on the landline. I’d be reachable at the hotel via reception.
The only place that remains is the hotel.
If I were out and about and wanted to reach home or the office I could drop a coin in a payphone. That’s not possible now.
That’s before you factor in changing societal expectations on reachability.
When it comes to kids, they would be able to phone home as they remember their home number and have some money or worse case could reverse charges from a payphone. That’s not possible today.
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.
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.
A more apt comparison is would you be OK reading by candle light sometimes for a few hours? I would be, it’s perfectly fine to read for a few hours by a bright candle.
Comparing smartphones to antibiotics is somewhat ironic given that smartphone addiction is a disease, not a cure to one. There is no law of the universe that says that technology cannot create ills where previously there were none. I assure you that you are allowed to turn your phone off for hours, days, weeks, forever if you so choose, and your life may be better for it.
> Instant messaging and calling is extremely valuable.
They, and I, are disagreeing with you. Instant messaging and calling are nice-to-have at best, and a huge burden at worst. They teach an extreme codependency that has little benefit, and causes a lot of anxiety.
They're convenient when somebody needs to go to the hospital, needs to get picked up, you can't find somebody in a museum, you're at the store and somebody at home might need something.
You are rarely using it for this. You're mostly wittering on and on about nonsense and not giving each other any room. When others go silent or don't answer quickly enough you get nervous about what they think about you, or if they are in danger. When others are interrogating you about things that make you uncomfortable, you feel like you have to answer now or you're making a statement with your silence.
Most of the useful stuff could be moved to a house phone (which doesn't exist anymore) and a payphone (which doesn't exist anymore.) For the people farther away, writing a letter was better. You don't need to be on the back of somebody 1000 miles away. There are too many of them, and companies and governments slip in. It's not healthy and it's not safe.
I’m confused by the mechanics. How do they know you’re reading unless you have a device that records you reading while you read, so is likely the device you’re reading on - encouraging people to stare at devices?
I actually read on my phone and have since ~2005 and a Palm device. I don’t use e ink or paper much simply because my phone fits in every pocket and is always there. I read constantly at every moment I get a chance to. No other form factor works for that. Even in a suit it fits well in the jacket pocket.
I feel fortunate that today's distractions didn't exist when I was younger (or I probably wouldn't read many books).
Nowadays I "turn off" all the distractions that I can before bed to get a few pages in. Reading during the day is still pretty challenging if the book has dull bits (I recently finished the 3 body problem series. At it's peak, its some of the best sci-fi I've ever read. But some parts of the books were such a slog to get through. During those sections I often found myself reaching for my phone, just out of habit)
I tried this with my kids, but I required them to also produce a one page essay on each book. They ignored the deal. One of them actually reads and likes reading, but he won't be bothered to write about what he has read (unless it's required for school).
The article explains that the payments are very low because the experiment is designed as a behavioral nudge rather than as a side hustle.
For a day of reading someone would only get 0.02SGD
Not Singapore specifically but in today's AI/tech world if you're not constantly working you're on the firing line.
I'm in the Bay Area. It's Sunday morning and I'm working becasue I still need to pay for food, rent, and enormous medical bills and don't want to get fired, and I got yelled at by my director this morning on Slack because I'm not delivering fast enough despite squashing 12 months' worth of work into 4.
I don't have time for books. Finding time for even exercise is hard.
This sounds like mostly a USA problem and not something that extrapolates well to other countries. I had a suspicion it’d come from a US point of view lol.
EDIT: while more common in the US, if you are actually regularly working weekends, look for a better job. In my part of FAANG I rarely have to work weekends, although the occasional crunch time can happen.
Seems a bit too dogmatic. I can nudge someone into intrinsic motivation with extrinsic incentives. It's hard to discover something you're not really looking for but if some other incentive lets you discover it then bingo.
Some examples from my own life: Paying someone's first climbing session -> lifelong climbers. Offering 5$ if you can beat this bot in chess -> obsessed with chess. Etc.
Is this singapore specially? My Singaporean colleagues spend less than 30 minute commuting (which is fine for reading, 15 mins on the metro is a great time to get into a habit), and that’s a fair amount of third spaces (mainly outdoor parks and malls so could be better).
Or are you making your own countries problems onto another country?
When I was a kid, my local small-town library used to have a "reading competition" each summer. They would set up about 10 small interactive dioramas each with a different theme -- a ski hill, a dragon's cave, etc. You'd get a little paper cut-out figure that represented you on your journey through the competition.
At each stage, you'd do some activity on the diorama to determine what sort of book you had to read next -- i.e. a little spinner, or a launcher that would launch your paper dude into a bunch of cups each with a different topic written on the side. You then had to find a book at the library on the topic, and the librarian would gauge whether it was appropriately "difficult" for your reading level, or whether you were trying to read something easy just to progress faster.
Each time you finished a book, they'd ask you a few questions to ensure you read it, and then you could progress to the next diorama. If you completed the circuit, you got a star on the board and could restart from the beginning. Some kids would do 10 or more circuits in a single summer.
I had a blast with it. I lived pretty far away so couldn't participate as much as I would have liked, but kids in walking distance would sometimes read a book every day or two just to keep going. All those librarians are gone and the library has moved on to a different location, and I never did find out who was responsible for building all those dioramas every summer.
Such a classic societal fail most people can't seem to recognize. The point isn't to read, it's to read because you want to, not because of a stick/carrot.
RMS makes the same mistake in thinking that disallowing proprietary software in repos is better than giving the tools to avoid it and education about what is compromised in the process.
A man may be a heretic in the truth; and if he believes things only because his pastor says so, or the assembly so determines, without knowing other reason, though his belief be true, yet the very truth he holds becomes his heresy
― John Milton, Areopagitica
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.
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.
I don't think you're one of the happy few.
You're more like one of the happy many.
Amazon has sold an estimated 70 million Kindle readers.
Ebook sales are at least 20% of book sales.
I read 60+ books a year. Almost all on my Kindle. My partner and my sister are similar. I know of one person who has bought a Kindle and not used it much.
Australians alone are reading 1.6 billion pages a month on Kindles.
https://www.techguide.com.au/news/gadgets-news/australians-d...
I didn't read OP's remark as "few people make long use out of e-readers," but rather "many more people have e-readers and don't use them," which I'm willing to believe but don't have any evidence of. At the very least it's likely to reflect the case with physical books. The people who don't read you don't hear as much from.
Without knowing the physical book equivalents, these numbers mean very little.
> Ebook sales are at least 20% of book sales.
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.
I sort of discovered this accidentally twice.
First was when I go the Kindle I realized I could make the text as big as I wanted so I would do that, as stated before.
Another time is when I wanted an external monitor and I bought a big TV because it was much cheaper. Because the TV was bigger the text was also bigger, and I realized how much easier it was for me to work.
I think I used to feel like there was a "coolness" factor to keeping the text small. I don't know why I thought that, but I think what's much cooler than having lots of small text is actually being able to read and understand the text on the screen.
Now I have no desire to impress anyone, and I keep my text in the browser at like 200%.
For me it's not coolness it's just context, 16:9 is too short to fit enough lines and scrolling and jumping is as annoying as tabbing in and out.
This is also one problem with ereaders for me, especially for anything technical. With paper when the textbook says refer to fig 13.2 or we covered this in section 4.3 I can just flip to that page with my fingers as a bookmark, read it, and go right back. Just not as tactile on computers. Even if you did like lsp assisted jumping all over the place you quickly forget what the heck was going on and where you came in from.
Of course maybe someone will come and correct me but this is just what I experience. It's still better flipping pages for technical stuff. It's like scribbling a DJ disc, imagine doing that with a mouse or keyboard. It's just… different.
Even on computer monitors, I always bump the scaling to 125% on modern high resolution screens.
150% gang here. Actually 200% on my laptop but the resolution of that display is just ridiculous.
I tell everyone to set it to what you find comfortable and then adjust it up a notch.
> primarily because I can make the text gigantic and I don't lose track of my place on the page nearly as often... where if the text is small I really can't follow it. On all my computers the text is gigantic
+1 I prefer the Kindle for the exact same reasons.
I used to read a lot of physical books. But I can't tolerate physical books after I started reading on the Kindle, especially books with tiny text.
Plus it is easier to keep a better posture with the Kindle.
But it still does not feel so good to buy Kindle ebooks. Somehow purchasing physical books seems more justifiable.
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
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.
What’s annoying is when you want to look back at something earlier in the book. Then you have to use the clunky search and hope you don’t lose your current place.
That's the only issue I have with ebooks and the reason why I would never read a technical / reference book on it where you want to jump around and have your fingers in some pages to flip back and forth.
KOReader has bookmark support; if I need to go back a few pages (or use the search), I'll just set a bookmark for my current place so I can easily jump back.
Right so now we need a workflow to do something as simple as looking back a few pages. I know it’s necessary but it’s definitely a regression.
The constraint here is the e-ink refresh rate. That constraint does not exist on regular screens, which is why I'm surprised neither mobile reader apps or even desktop software takes purposeful advantage of it: fast scrolling back with fine, per-page control, keeping page in-place and zero perceptible latency rendering full page. With a finger drag or click&drag movement, this can easily be even faster than with paper books.
I know this works because I've seen it with some PDF readers on desktop in the past, when I lucked into a combination of lightweight document and right "fit page to display" scaling. And, of course, this works natively in browsers with PgUp/PgDown, but only on the few remaining websites that haven't been thoroughly shittified (no "en-" there on purpose) with JavaScript and excessive styling.
When you go back in a physical book, you also put a bookmark (either an actual bookmark or one of your finger) to be able to resume reading where you were, no?
To each their own, it has never really bothered me honestly.
An you bought one for her.
Ha, no, I actually don't talk to that grandmother anymore and probably never will again since she's extremely racist and doesn't like my (Hispanic) wife. I wouldn't buy her gifts at the best of times.
Grandmothers are going to be racist, that's just a default setting. I wish I spent more time with mine when they were around.
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.
Systems like this are not new. When I was in elementary school in the US Midwest, we had a program called accelerated reader, (AR), where you could take tests about books and get points. The longer the book, the more the points. You could redeem the points for candy.
Anyway I was banned from AR in the 5th grade because I learned you could sort the book list by points awarded, so I wrote down the list of most valuable books and checked them out from the library. I convinced a 2 friends to help, one would take the test and write down the questions and then someone else would read the book to get the answers and share them. We ended up racking up like way more points than anyone else and the teachers called out and made us explain.
My middle school had a reading program where the monthly winner would get a book of their choice from the scholastic catalog. This was a very enticing prize to a poor, voracious reader like me.
After winning my way through the Hobbit/LOTR series, they changed the rules specifically for me to require oral exams on each of the books I was reading, and later book reports. I was eventually banned completely so there could be an actual competition.
In fourth grade, I went to the library and noticed a book with a tripod on the cover blasting people with a heat ray. Of course I checked it out. I didn't know what scifi was at the time, and had never heard of HG Wells. Anyhow, I loved every word in the book, and devoured scifi ever since.
Another seminal book for me was Lord of the Rings, which I read in 6th grade.
You basically discovered the exploit in gamified reading before gamification had a name. I wonder how many kids today would optimize the points system instead of actually reading the books.
I remember around 5th grade getting in trouble for finding the software to create/edit the AR tests
Ha I also got suspected of this but I actually just read the books. Three musketeers and shogun was particularly lots of points as well as the Harry Potter books.
I had so many points that even though I stopped reading books on the list in 6th (I got into manga). I still placed 1st in my school until the last semester of 8th because of my point lead.
yea a free candy bar for kids every 50 days for just reading sounds great
Most kids will correctly recognize up front it's not worth the effort.
> 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.
> Cursive writing.
Is there anything useful about cursive writing? Other than it being positively correlated with many good things because education is the common topic?
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-athletes-way/202...
note that at least "Handwriting but not typewriting leads to widespread brain connectivity: a high-density EEG study with implications for the classroom" is critized - https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10....
Is there any evidence that handwriting in cursive is better than handwriting normally? The Van der Meer study only compared cursive to typing or drawing, not handwriting.
It's rather suspicious to leave normal handwriting out of the study, and makes me suspect bad faith.
> evidence that handwriting in cursive is better than handwriting normally?
Perhaps I'm too old for this conversation but surely cursive is writing normally?
Anecdotally my kids wrote a fair bit before they were forced to do “joined up writing”. Since then they have stopped almost entirely and what little they do write is far less legible than before.
If there is one thing I would ban from education it’s this 17th century torture device.
How does this work? In school if they’re forced to write in cursive surely they still have to write the same amount? And if it’s writing in their spare time that has reduced they can write non-cursive so that shouldn’t be a blocker.
You being downvoted is just sad
Stating a truth is not adding to the conversation though. A little sad, sure, but grandparent's comment is barely even a building block to kick off a wider conversation, let alone thoughtful or additive on its own.
Maybe it doesn't deserve to be on the bottom, dead, but something this basic certainly doesn't deserve to be showered in upvotes
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.
This has not been my experience as a foreigner. WiFi at Singapore public libraries is handled through Wireless@SG - it just requires a one time setup.
https://www.nlb.gov.sg/main/services/facilities/wifi-at-the-...
How can you download an app without WiFi…
I ran into this a few years ago. Maybe they improved it.
You get a local "tourist" SIM card then configure EAP-SIM. But I guess you don't need the wifi that much once you have the SIM card.
They also charge a pretty hefty membership fee if you’re not at least a PR, and charge for physical book reservations. It was pretty shocking for me after the California library system.
And I’m a taxpayer. Net, I pay more taxes than a citizen with the same income.
> Net, I pay more taxes than a citizen with the same income.
No you don't, most foreigners don't pay more taxes overall per lifetime.
Surely the reasonable metric is per year rather than per lifetime given that adult immigrants don't use education and childhood services.
For libraries, does it really matter who pays taxes and who doesn’t? Seems like it’s a public good that should be available regardless of ability to pay.
> And I’m a taxpayer. Net, I pay more taxes than a citizen with the same income.
Imagine being so capitalist/money-pilled it entitles you to greater rights than citizens. The citizens have made sacrifices for their country so people like you could work in it at top dollar. Don't ever forget that.
Work out with a friend to share his library card?
Why should library let ANYONE use the Wi-Fi? I am probabky old school when I think people go to library to rent the books and that should be the main purpose of the library, not provide some free co-working space for cheapskates.
Sadly Prague libraries provide free Wi-Fi which is at least in one branch I frequent abused by loud kids playing videogames on their phones.
you might find this interesting - https://untranslatedjp.substack.com/p/japans-book-scene-is-q...
Japan's libraries allow cafes and bookstores to operate, which can increase traffic.
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.
> It's very much a classist country where you position in society is determined by your immigration status.
Tell me, which country does not prioritize it's citizens first?
Considering that at least the males of the country are forced to serve in the army in their primes, most of them unwillingly, I think you migrants got the better end of the deal.
> 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.
There's a FAQ specifically addressing this [1]:
> If you do not have Singpass, you may still approach our pool or gym staff to buy single-entry passes.
[1] https://ask.gov.sg/activesg/questions/clztixkjr00agracq0ys53...
Good luck finding staff willing to help you IME
Citizens are conscripted into the military. They spend two years at the prime of their youth in the army getting paid almost nothing. And after that two years is over, for the next 10 years or so, they have to go back to reservist military training for several weeks annually.
They also have to pass the annual military fitness test otherwise they will have to go back to the military to do further physical training in the evenings for weeks even if they have a job. Throughout their 20s and early 30s, most of them cannot even have long hair due to this military duty. Penalty of avoidance is military prison of 3 years. When they go overseas for work or other reasons for longer period of time, they need to apply for an exit permit from the military like a leash. When they go overseas for short periods of time, they still have to notify their military unit first.
People die or get injured all the time in the army during their conscription period.
And then you have foreigners coming over and complaining they are not getting subsidized services when they also pay tax.
Why don't you first talk about the responsibilities of these "first class" citizens before talking about their privileges.
This is also pretty funny considering how much of Singapore's business is related to sheltering the wealth of the rich from other nations.
A lot of those people are permanent residents.
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.
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.)
No, it is not all just ‘content’ which is roughly the same and can be consumed like a snack. That’s a word used by people who think thoughts, feelings and stories are just carriers for advertising and selling you things.
Words matter, don’t take your word choice from ad factories instagram which popularised this term.
Reading (I won’t say consuming) a good book can stay with you forever. People from 2000 years ago can speak to you in their own voice from behind the grave. And you have the audacity to call it content and compare it to cat videos and call it ‘overhyped’?
Reading a book from 2000 years ago is not the same class as reading a recently published modern romance fiction. The latter is basically consumed like a snack.
On days when I am too lazy to be productive or be “creating” something, I sometimes take out my old Harry Potter collection and read for two straight hours. I don’t really feel that’s meaningfully different from watching online videos for two straight hours. It is indeed just consumption. And Harry Potter series is in fact one of the better ones among contemporary literature.
Reading is the least stimulating than other forms of "content" mediums.
Reading about a spell duel is neurologically (and physically) going to be a very different experience than watching flashing colours on screen with loud blasts.
The visualisation of the world printed in words is more active than having it painted on screen for you.
I struggle to read, the last fiction I read was now 8 years ago but the value of it is not lost on me...
Although I can't personally imagine re-reading YA lit, it still requires you to use huge amounts of grammar, vocabulary, and cultural knowledge in a seamless automatic way. To imagine an alternate world, people, and culture, while your eyes scan constantly across page after page invisible to your captured mind.
Those are the same language tools you need to use to create and evaluate your own writing. You're using a mental tool at a high level, even if it's not Ulysses (or Homer's Odyssey). This is fundamentally different from passively viewing cat videos, or thirst traps, which may well not involve language at all.
A 2 year old can be entertained by short form video, but can not even sound out a single word of a book.
95% of books (and I'm being generous) are not worth the paper they are printed on, let alone the time spent reading them.
And then, there are the gems: War of the Worlds, and Lord of the Rings.
I didn't say it was all roughly the same or that you shouldn't do it, but it's obviously still consumption. If nobody ever consumed, there would be less value in creating art. Like all things in life, it should be done in moderation and balanced with creative activities.
I find the words consumption and content problematic. They encourage you to look at the world in a certain way. What would happen to your world view if you step outside the confines of those words, defined by advertisers who don't care about quality but instead measure clicks, engagement and profits and have encouraged the worst sort of 'content' to thrive (short form videos with very little substance)?
Most good art or writing requires engagement from the reader and something is created in engaging with it, something new that exists between the original work and the world of the reader. So I fundamentally disagree with the framing that reading is a passive activity and requires no creativity or engagement, or that creating is fundamentally different from engaging with the creations of others.
I use a similar heuristic, but I think what we "do" for leisure is still consumptive, albeit an active sort. Reading, for it's part, exercises cognition better than something like TV.
I rank listening to music way above audiobooks and podcasts. Music is a revelation.
Interesting. Singapore certainly tries many things to nudge their citizens to a better life. I also recall from a documentary I watched that they have a system where you get shopping vouchers for logging certain sports activities and similar things (I think there was also some incentive system for healthy food).
>Paying People to Put Down Their Phones and Read Books
Of course what people are doing when staring at there phones is also reading about 80% of the time. It's more about the quality of the reading I guess.
I’d guess most people are endlessly scrolling photo/video on their phones rather than reading.
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.
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.
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.
20 years ago I would be reachable at work on my desk phone. I’d be reachable at home on the landline. I’d be reachable at the hotel via reception.
The only place that remains is the hotel.
If I were out and about and wanted to reach home or the office I could drop a coin in a payphone. That’s not possible now.
That’s before you factor in changing societal expectations on reachability.
When it comes to kids, they would be able to phone home as they remember their home number and have some money or worse case could reverse charges from a payphone. That’s not possible today.
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.
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.
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.
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.
A more apt comparison is would you be OK reading by candle light sometimes for a few hours? I would be, it’s perfectly fine to read for a few hours by a bright candle.
Comparing smartphones to antibiotics is somewhat ironic given that smartphone addiction is a disease, not a cure to one. There is no law of the universe that says that technology cannot create ills where previously there were none. I assure you that you are allowed to turn your phone off for hours, days, weeks, forever if you so choose, and your life may be better for it.
That’s fine, but the argument needs to be something better than “humanity did without it and survived as a species.”
This is a completely laughable comparison.
> Instant messaging and calling is extremely valuable.
They, and I, are disagreeing with you. Instant messaging and calling are nice-to-have at best, and a huge burden at worst. They teach an extreme codependency that has little benefit, and causes a lot of anxiety.
They're convenient when somebody needs to go to the hospital, needs to get picked up, you can't find somebody in a museum, you're at the store and somebody at home might need something.
You are rarely using it for this. You're mostly wittering on and on about nonsense and not giving each other any room. When others go silent or don't answer quickly enough you get nervous about what they think about you, or if they are in danger. When others are interrogating you about things that make you uncomfortable, you feel like you have to answer now or you're making a statement with your silence.
Most of the useful stuff could be moved to a house phone (which doesn't exist anymore) and a payphone (which doesn't exist anymore.) For the people farther away, writing a letter was better. You don't need to be on the back of somebody 1000 miles away. There are too many of them, and companies and governments slip in. It's not healthy and it's not safe.
Cool idea, leveraging microtransactions for literacy. Curious how they prevent abuse or just "gaming the system" without actually reading.
I’m confused by the mechanics. How do they know you’re reading unless you have a device that records you reading while you read, so is likely the device you’re reading on - encouraging people to stare at devices?
I actually read on my phone and have since ~2005 and a Palm device. I don’t use e ink or paper much simply because my phone fits in every pocket and is always there. I read constantly at every moment I get a chance to. No other form factor works for that. Even in a suit it fits well in the jacket pocket.
I feel fortunate that today's distractions didn't exist when I was younger (or I probably wouldn't read many books).
Nowadays I "turn off" all the distractions that I can before bed to get a few pages in. Reading during the day is still pretty challenging if the book has dull bits (I recently finished the 3 body problem series. At it's peak, its some of the best sci-fi I've ever read. But some parts of the books were such a slog to get through. During those sections I often found myself reaching for my phone, just out of habit)
My kids would be all over this. Maybe I should start paying myself for reading documentation.
I tried this with my kids, but I required them to also produce a one page essay on each book. They ignored the deal. One of them actually reads and likes reading, but he won't be bothered to write about what he has read (unless it's required for school).
Micropayments for reading? Curious if this actually fosters intrinsic love for books, or just turns it into a chore for cash.
The article explains that the payments are very low because the experiment is designed as a behavioral nudge rather than as a side hustle. For a day of reading someone would only get 0.02SGD
duolingo seems to have figured out how to get people to drop what they're doing to perform a task
is there like a duolingo for books
like a bookmark that annoys you if you havent moved it in too long
There's also the fear of losing a streak one built for so long I'd say
My kid would totally game this system. Smart way to get reluctant readers started, though.
I read books on the computer, with the help of llm that I can ask questions about the book. That's the best reading I have found working for me.
Is this for technical books/textbooks?
They're going to have to try a lot harder than $1 for 50 days worth of reading, in a world where any time taken off from work is a risk.
What’s the risk? Not familiar enough with Singapore to judge that.
Not Singapore specifically but in today's AI/tech world if you're not constantly working you're on the firing line.
I'm in the Bay Area. It's Sunday morning and I'm working becasue I still need to pay for food, rent, and enormous medical bills and don't want to get fired, and I got yelled at by my director this morning on Slack because I'm not delivering fast enough despite squashing 12 months' worth of work into 4.
I don't have time for books. Finding time for even exercise is hard.
This sounds like mostly a USA problem and not something that extrapolates well to other countries. I had a suspicion it’d come from a US point of view lol.
EDIT: while more common in the US, if you are actually regularly working weekends, look for a better job. In my part of FAANG I rarely have to work weekends, although the occasional crunch time can happen.
I've worked in Singapore before. It's not a chill work culture there either. In fact it's about the same.
> They're going to have to try a lot harder than $1 for 50 days worth of reading, in a world where any time taken off from work is a risk.
If the "get paid to walk" programmes [1][2] were an inspiration for this, it's mostly retirees and students that will do and try to game this [3].
[1] https://www.healthhub.sg/programmes/healthyliving
[2] (RIP) https://www.hpb.gov.sg/healthy-living/our-lumihealth-journey...
[3] https://sgunfitrunners.blogspot.com/2016/04/5-despicable-way...
Nobody is gaming something to make $7 a year.
Extrinsic incentives undermine intrinsic motivation.
Seems a bit too dogmatic. I can nudge someone into intrinsic motivation with extrinsic incentives. It's hard to discover something you're not really looking for but if some other incentive lets you discover it then bingo.
Some examples from my own life: Paying someone's first climbing session -> lifelong climbers. Offering 5$ if you can beat this bot in chess -> obsessed with chess. Etc.
It’s worth S$0.02 for 15-min read.
Better to just give people more free time: Reduce workweeks to 4 days.
Make working from home/anywhere the norm instead of the exception.
Build more third places: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_place
Give people more safety nets including UBI so they don't feel like they constantly need to be "earning" the right to live in basic comfort.
Is this singapore specially? My Singaporean colleagues spend less than 30 minute commuting (which is fine for reading, 15 mins on the metro is a great time to get into a habit), and that’s a fair amount of third spaces (mainly outdoor parks and malls so could be better).
Or are you making your own countries problems onto another country?
Talking generally
It's high time civilization lets people slow the fuck down
Especially with the Age of AI upon us
Certainly in professional jobs in Europe I don’t see that.
When I was a kid, my local small-town library used to have a "reading competition" each summer. They would set up about 10 small interactive dioramas each with a different theme -- a ski hill, a dragon's cave, etc. You'd get a little paper cut-out figure that represented you on your journey through the competition.
At each stage, you'd do some activity on the diorama to determine what sort of book you had to read next -- i.e. a little spinner, or a launcher that would launch your paper dude into a bunch of cups each with a different topic written on the side. You then had to find a book at the library on the topic, and the librarian would gauge whether it was appropriately "difficult" for your reading level, or whether you were trying to read something easy just to progress faster.
Each time you finished a book, they'd ask you a few questions to ensure you read it, and then you could progress to the next diorama. If you completed the circuit, you got a star on the board and could restart from the beginning. Some kids would do 10 or more circuits in a single summer.
I had a blast with it. I lived pretty far away so couldn't participate as much as I would have liked, but kids in walking distance would sometimes read a book every day or two just to keep going. All those librarians are gone and the library has moved on to a different location, and I never did find out who was responsible for building all those dioramas every summer.
Such a classic societal fail most people can't seem to recognize. The point isn't to read, it's to read because you want to, not because of a stick/carrot.
RMS makes the same mistake in thinking that disallowing proprietary software in repos is better than giving the tools to avoid it and education about what is compromised in the process.
Yes, but without Pizza Hut involved, do they even stand a chance?
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.