[extropy-chat] Self-Enhncmnt: data acquisition at high speed

[Robert J. Bradbury]

Harvey's comments a week or two ago got me to thinking about
how one can use technology available now for self-improvement,
greater time efficiency, greater comprehension or retention, etc.

Normally humans speaking quickly manage ~300 words/min (wpm), though
the Guinness Book of Records (1995) reports this can be pushed
to ~600 wpm.  Normal reading speed is perhaps 240 wpm (though
this was from the net, not the GBoR so ByrBwr).  I have heard
that listening speed can be up to 3x speaking speed and that
at one point there were tape recorders that could perform
this kind of compression for playback of recordings.

Some googling turned up this source:

> Vortex Machine Assisted Reading Software

  http://www.vallier.com/tenax/vortex.html  (Main information page)
  http://www.vallier.com/tenax/corn_use.html  Download the demo software
  http://www.vallier.com/tenax/cornix.html  (check out the demo)

** Note the URLs may no longer be valid -- one would have to use
** the Wayback Machine most likely to track down the pages.

> "The machine assisted reading software that allows you to read at up to
> 2000 words per minute in fonts as large as 1000 points. Vortex will suck
> the text out of your Windows software program and display it as you want
> to see it! You choose the font, font size, speed of display, where to
> start and what colors you want the text."

Now, speed reading is great (though I would question the 2000 wpm number
as another source said only 1000 wpm -- which is closer to high speed
listening capabilities).  It would be interesting to compare speed
vs. comprehension at these accelerated rates in the visual and auditory
input channels.  Furthermore to look at what happens if you combine
the channels (a) at the same time (hearing what you are seeing) or
(b) separate the channels (what you hear is different from what you see).

Now with software of this nature one begins to ask if this could be
used to "compress" education times (either in children who still
have extremely plastic brains or adults in college)?

But in any case it looks to me like the methods and perhaps even the
tools may exist for Harvey to get twice as much news in 1/2 to 1/3
the time or 2-3x the news in the same amount of time.

This would actually make a great software product for professionals
such as market analysts, lawyers, scientists, etc. who have to spend
much of their time absorbing information.

Robert