If you are one of those people for whom physical exercise feels like a great pain in the back, this article might be for you. If you got paid to do it, it would be a different story, right?
It is with such lazy people in mind that a Japanese company developed an app that will count the steps you take in one day and give you back a set amount of money for them, proportional to the effort made.
The “Step Tracking” app is not the breakthrough, it’s actually the way in which you get paid called “Bitwalking” (BW) and the possibility to use it to get goods or services in stores able to process it, or even trading it for hard cash. A total of ten thousand steps, around 8 kilometers give or take, will net you a profit of one dollar. You will also be able to manage and track the steps as well as the money from your smartphone.
There are already stores and companies interested in joining the project to accept BW as a legit payment method, and there is even a British bank which manifested its intention of being a part of the trade process. The spirit of “Bitwalking”, in the words of its developers, is to motivate modern society to do more exercise, instead of just using the comfort of our vehicles to move from place to place and leaving behind the habit of walking. However, how have developed societies welcomed the project? As it is with everything else, things work according to the needs of those who use it.
In Africa for instance, people see the app as a mechanism to duplicate their income. In these, less wealthy, societies people are forced beyond their liking or the wish to exercise, to walk great lengths daily just to get to work, since they are societies with such poor economic development that the income BW could generate for them would be like getting twice their salary. Definitely, a case in which the motivation is the need, or even the misery of these people, rather than the will to be sporty.
The project is also aiming to guide the participants that are interested in joining the app as a way to increase their income in everything related to its use and the fate of this income, so that they can be reinvested in other aspects, such as the betterment of their life as well as physical and emotional well-being.
However, in my opinion, whatever the reason, exercise will be good for human beings, whether you do it for money, pleasure or health matters not. So looking at it from this perspective, this app is groundbreaking and represents benefits for those who use it. Its focus and uses can vary, depending on the society, culture and customs where it is applied, but maybe that is just the key to its future success: Its lack of limits, the same you have for walking.
ALFA