In the time it’s taken you to read this sentence, you could have read it twice over. (We didn’t mean that to sound as patronising as it did, honest). The truth is, soon, the way in which we read will change forever thanks to Boston based startup company ‘Spritz’. They’ve been busy developing text technology for the past 3 years that promises to give you a reading time of 250 to 1,000 words per minute. Meaning the average Joe will be able to digest a page of 50 Shades of Grey faster than you can say ‘giggidy giggidy’.
The system works by breaking sentences down into single words that have specific red coloured letters to help focus the eyes point of orientation, or ‘Optimal Recognition Point’ if you want the propa’ term. The individual words flash up oober quickly on a box allowing your brain to take in the sentence without wasting time tracking across the page. And apparently all that left to right action takes up a whopping 80% of the time it takes us to read a sentence, leaving only 20% for the actual reading part!
Now there’s technology that helps aid the way we live our lives, and then there’s technology that changes the future of the way we do and have done things for centuries – and that ladies and gentlemen is when things start to REALLY get exciting. And Samsung seem to think so too. They’re already set to introduce the new technology to the soon to be launched Galaxy S5 smartphone. Apple are also on the companies radar with their Google Glass, along with Amazon’s Kindle which is sure to be a prime product for the new technology to integrate with.
There’s no question people will adapt to this new age of reading, it’s quicker and easier, you’ll be able to get through a novel in under 90 minutes! But thinking about it, is that really what we want? Reading for some of us is an indulgence, a luxury, a bit of quiet time – wouldn’t words flashing in our faces ruin all that, you know, niceness? Our reasoning is this, Spritz will be great for mobiles, tablets, even ambient ads like billboards etc. But not so much for novels, scripts, research and just general good pieces of literature that require our undivided time and attention – they’re the ones that would suffer from this fast paced induced technology world.
But other than that, yeah, it’s a great idea. Keep up the good work Spritz.
