Reading faster
Spritz is publicizing a speed-reading app that really seems to work. The program feeds you one word at a time. This site lets you experiment with up to 600 wpm, though apparently the program can go faster. I guess the idea is to load your reading material into the program, which is something I'd like to try.
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One problem I have with this form of reading is the way information is presented to us on a page, and the way the eye naturally jumps around.
We see side bars and inset boxes that contain, among other things, expansions on the current, or a nearby, point. We also see links, in this Internet age, to other articles of potential interest, whether or not they're related to the article being read.
These sorts of things and the skills to notice them might well be lost, reducing the speed with which we arrive at a variety of articles in the first place, and so perhaps reducing a "life cycle" speed of reading.
This sort of technique might well be useful for getting through a technical or other difficult subject article, as in a journal, but I don't see it useful in general.
Additionally, given how much Modern Man reads, in any form, another skill might be lost, or become harder to train: the ability to notice things peripherally--critical skills from within a fighter cockpit or when on the hunt.
Eric Hines
It was an interesting experience, but the presentation of one word at a time is clunky for me. I could read at the 600 wpm immediately, though, having been taught how to speed read and read quickly when I was in 3rd grade.
Cool app, though, for many people who aren't proficient at reading fast. I wonder how dyslexic's handle this app?
Yeah, I can do the 600 wpm right out of the box also.
I'd like to try it on something more technical. It might be fine for emails and news stories, but I wonder how it would work with something that required you to pause for thought?
Yep, 600 doable right away.
It certainly wouldn't work for poetry.
I generally like reading because I have control of the feed rate of what I'm taking in. Given a choice between watching an instructive video or reading instructions, I'll take the reading option every time, because I feel like it doesn't waste my time. This one word at a time streaming method is problematic in the reverse- If I want to consider a statement for a moment, I can't - the stream keeps flowing. I was worried about blinking during the 600wpm stream.
It would be nice to be able to control the feedstream at every moment, and perhaps be able to pull back the frame to review the whole sentence or paragraph at will, then return to the fast stream. I'm also, of course, very curious to know what the higher speeds feel like.
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