Reading redefined!

[Napoléon]

Came across this on reddit, blew my mind.

http://www.spritzinc.com/

Basically, the average person reads at 120-180 words per minute. This software can increase that to 500 words per minute. Don't believe me? Try it out on the site.


I can really see this catching on with things like google glass coming into play. This is the future right here!

[Nine]

I was looking at that earlier. Its completely awesome. I need it!

[SteelCurtain]

Wow. More than twice the average speed, and less eye fatigue? That's so incredible.

[Cato]

I like it. I was a little worried about how choppy 250wpm was; I couldn't turn off my inner voice while reading. 500wpm was smooth so I'll look forward to this, particularly for reading from my phone.

One thing that I'll be curious about has to do with personal reading habits. Faster is always better, but depending on what I'm reading I'll often pause for a moment to give consideration to something I've just read. With a book or kindle I can just stop; I would have to train myself to stop the flow of text to do the same.

[Angrboda]

That's cool, but I don't know if I'd give up reading the old fashioned way. Maybe once I got used to it.

[Napoléon]

Yeah, we spend much more time scanning across the page and finding the word than simply seeing it and processing it in our brain. When the words simply pop up in the same expected place, it's pretty incredible how fast our minds can process the words and make sense of them.

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I like it. I was a little worried about how choppy 250wpm was; I couldn't turn off my inner voice while reading. 500wpm was smooth so I'll look forward to this, particularly for reading from my phone.

Yeah at lower rates in my head it sounded pretty robotic. I thought 500 was a little too fast. 400 seemed perfect for me.

[Clueless Morgan]

Cool. I find that the 500 wpm one goes by too fast for me and I had to watch it three times to make sure what I thought I saw was actually what I saw. 400 wpm seemed the most comfortable for me.

The downside to this, though, is right after i tried all the speeds I looked around their website and had a negative image of the black screen and the white box the text over everything I was trying to see and read which was really distracting.

[Angrboda]

Scientists have studied RSVP for years, and it does appear to bypass the speed limit imposed by eye movements during normal reading. RSVP technology is the most promising way scientists have yet found to speed up reading.

But there's another check on reading speed that Spritz can't do anything about: our ability to comprehend what we're reading. When we read really fast — especially in complex or difficult material — our understanding of the text suffers. (Recall the old Woody Allen joke: He speed-read War and Peace, and came away with the insight that "it's about Russia.")

http://theweek.com/article/index/258243/...king-about

[Napoléon]

Great find rasetsu. I remember wondering about this very thing, you might be able to read fast but it doesn't guarantee reading comprehension.

[Foxaèr]

I think I already read fast enough. I can average a 400-500 page book in one day.