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Singapore’s National Library Board offers micropayments to build reading habits

288 points · 149 comments · geox

  1. yipinwong · · focus · HN ↗
    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.

    1. wbobeirne · · focus · HN ↗
      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.
      1. kibwen · · focus · HN ↗
        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.
        1. andrepd · · focus · HN ↗
          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.

          1. kibwen · · focus · HN ↗
            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.
            1. wat10000 · · focus · HN ↗
              That’s fine, but the argument needs to be something better than “humanity did without it and survived as a species.”
            2. andrepd · · focus · HN ↗
              Did you read why I wrote? It appears you completely ignored it and are just talking past me... Yes I goddamn know "technology can create ills where previously there were none", that's why I called algorithmic social media a catastrophe.... Swear to god
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