Originally posted by benson chang on January 20, 2019
We tend to be spending more and more time with our head buried in our smartphones, especially on public transit (because, come on, looking at other people is just awkward). Most of this time is spent on the likes of Facebook, Instagram etc. with very little personal growth potential. Here is where an app like Curiosity can help (https://curiosity.com/app/). Curiosity is a location-based app with plenty of articles categorized into categories such as “Mind & Body”, “Personal Growth” and “Science & Technology”. Being location-based, when possible, it will provide interesting articles for the area around the user. With that said, there is no need to be limited by the location, all the articles on Curiosity can be accessed at any time. The app itself can be used for free with ads, but the paid version is fairly cheap.
The beauty of an app like Curiosity is that the user can effectively choose the general topic they wish to learn about and get a variety of information. It is not as focused as Wikipedia, as it is meant to give general knowledge. This is a great way to gain a breadth of knowledge, learning while passing time that is typically wasted. The articles are written at a very approachable level for the general public with little prerequisite knowledge. For example, the article on the discovery of a new black hole provides the basic information on what a is a black hole. With the variety of topics and thousands of articles, it is a great way to pass the ten minute commute on the bus or the hours of time on the road during a trip. Furthermore, Curiosity is fairly well polished for both the computer version and the mobile version. Sign-in syncing makes for a connected experience across devices. The main short-coming of Curiosity is the speed of article updates.
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This is a great discussion and really interesting topic. I once attended a presentation by a well-renowned scientist and one of the audience questions posed to the presenter was how he would raise children in the modern world. He immediately exclaimed that we needed to throw out the TV’s and replace it with a computer that has internet connection. His argument was that it is better for a child to explore a world of knowledge and go down the metaphorical “rabbit hole” to discover their interests and be in charge of asking their own questions (active agents in pursuit of knowledge) than simply being on the consumer or receiving end of information transmitted over the TV. I feel like that fits in to the conversation above. Also, I thought I’d share this link to a site called Metafact (https://metafact.io/about_us). It’s almost like Quora but with experts on various knowledge domains answering user questions. Answers from experts in a similar field are aggregated in the response to a post.
I couldn’t agree with the original author more. We often find ourselves bored, it could be waiting in the dentist’s office or restless in bed. Currently, we’re all spending much more time at home than previously, so we are likely picking up our phones more often. We may reach for our mobile devices only to scroll mindlessly through a social media feed. Curiosity sounds like a great way to fill this boredom, especially since you can choose the category that you’re interested in learning about. I’ve been on a self-help book kick lately and so the Personal Growth category sounds interesting to me. The great thing about Curiosity is that if my interest changes, I can switch my subject and perhaps choose to dig into traveling and exploration to figure out where my next adventure will take me. With over 5000 articles and new ones added every day, there will never be a shortage of things to learn with this app.
There was a comment left on this post by Adrian Yee, who did bring up a good point that including a forum would help create a community of practice. Admittedly, if I was to use Curiosity, I wouldn’t participate in a discussion forum, as I find that online discussion forums can get ugly very quickly. With that said, I can see how it could be a great experience for people who enjoy learning to come together and discuss that learning, share experiences, etc.
Hey Natalie,
App aside, I love this video by Veritasium talking about why Boredom and curiousity is so good for the human brain in general. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKPwKFigF8U&t=370s
As for the app, this is really interesting to me. I tend to like to explore like this, but it does take me a lot of time to do the googling and find the hidden gems myself. More often than not, I am heading to community groups for an area and asking for insider advice instead. Absolutely agree with Adrian Yee that a community forum may be the way forward, and travel apps such as Trip Advisor or AirBnB are starting to include this into their app models now as well, which is great. I think, better than a discussion forum, would be to have a community contribution section that is moderated. I.e. if I know about something in my town, I can submit it to be listed on the app, with pictures and a description. That may be a perfect solution?
There are increasing numbers of apps that are playing in this realm, and I think it’s going to be an interesting place for the “real” and “digital” worlds to meet.
Comment originally posted by Adrian Yee on September 15th, 2019
Curiosity app is an interesting tool. But it is more or less a tool to present and transfer information to end-users. It is an electronic format of the encyclopedia and organized into topics. It will be better if the designer can create a forum for end-users to discuss the topic and create a community of practice.