So one of the most exciting things about being a reader in the 21st century are all of the changes! From E-books (electronic) to e-books (enhanced as Michael from Books on the Night Stand said in their most recent podcast) to interactive books on tablets and books with fold out maps and postcards and interactive graphic novels what more could we possible want? If you haven’t seen it yet the Boston based start up Spritz created the new “holy-shit” technology that could impact how everyone reads in the near future. I’m not going to go into the pros and cons of this, I just thought it was super cool and wanted to share it. (Thanks Matt!)
Imagine being able to read a book at 600 words per minute with NO training. Look at the image to the right if you haven’t already, can you read it? As you can see that’s 500 words pre minute! My roommate, Matt, posted this on Facebook today and I was fascinated. I read super fast on my own and this completely captivated me.
I immediately went to their website www.spritzinc.com to find out more about the technology and where it was in the development process. And I realized EVERY page on their website allows you to read it using their technology and I read the entire FAQs page at 600 words per minute and it was fascinating. I was not only impressed with my ability to read and comprehend it, but with how fast I was reading it. I found it a bit strenuous on my eyes to adjust at first, but not any more so than switching between reading on a computer/backlit tablet to a non-lit Kindle or traditional book. As I said, I’m not going into the pros or cons of this until the technology is actually released and I have time to  test it out with works of my choosing, but I will most definitely check it out. If they don’t do it for iOS I will most definitely look into an android tablet of some sort. My gut instinct is that I would love to use this for a lot of my Longreads and for some of the nonfiction books I have on my shelf, but I in general I’d stick with my normal reading habits. I would definitely recommend checking out either of these articles here or here and most definitely to check out the website and give it a go! (They start at 250wpm and go up to 600 wpm.)
I could never use this for pleasure reading. It would defeat the purpose of sitting down just to read and enjoy a book.
But for textbook reading or something along those lines? Heck, yes.
Yeah those are my thoughts. I think here it would be super useful is if you’re judging a prize of some sort and have to read 100 books in 200 days or something like that.
Yes. That would be a good use for it, too.
So cool! I agree with Heather. It’s not for fun reading, but for learning reading.
Yeah – and it would allow you to read something twice in a super short period of time if you were worried about comprehension, which I was.