Back from the book store,
Quickly scanned the book store, I see there is an article in Sci Ame saying that seems to say that we have pretty much reached the limits of human brain processing complexity (using the current neuronal substrate).
Bought a few books, mostly about internet traffic patterns if you like except this one:
I am now reading "Reading in the Brain" Stanislas Dehaene (still at Chapter 1, looks like only first and maybe last chapter are of interest to me)
So, It would appear that a 20 characters wide high-res screen could be fine-tuned to be the fastest device to read faster.
Inspiration from the Past
Last week falling asleep in front of TV there was an interview with the guy that invented the cel phone, I think he is now like 82 years old. He has a company that has released a new cel phone just like I always look for - just big buttons to dial, standard dial tone and tiny screen and nothing else. I bought recently a device in that class the Samsung rugged thing. It's sort of military proof (you can throw it) and has decent loud-speaker sound.
Another cool device in terms of form factor I remember (maybe 1982 first I saw) is a watch calculator.
http://t3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcR3bBS_Ac8WN6esVaUCL2_nHASq93fAw0kaaqC_JWzyTM2VHelxow&t=1
Of course from the stand-point of a user interface input device, the small size of the numeric keypad strokes is not optimal.
The Needed Solution
What we would need for ultimate device is detach the small screen and snap it in front of an eye, Why? The problem is we hold it then it makes gazing twice as hard. What we want is to place the screen as close as possible to the fovea to eliminate the need for eye grazing.
Such reading monocle (and the fact it's a monocle has also some mobility value).
Experiments reveal that only 15 deg of the fovea is used for reading, with about a 3:7 ratio of characters before and after what we are currently reading as focus. In fact outside of a 20 characters within a 50 ms exposure (1/20th of a second) all the characters can be replaced by X and spaces without a reader noticing.
I read elsewhere 6 on a side and 15 the other is still use (as opposed to 3 left and 7 right) as we use peripheral vision to distingush words edges outside that window, more letters right for western readers and the opposite for right to left alphabets)... That extra text window padding is to optimize the eye graze jumping to next word when it hits a spacing.
In experiments that tied eye tracking and place in focus only part of the text we currently read, about 4 saccades a seconds corresponds to actual text read chunk.
See p 379 here:
Some of these RSVP remind me my old text streamer.
I never noticed that branch of research before from that angle, they do use word by word display.
So if optimal reading is 400 to 500 words per minute (speed reading) from a piece of paper, it seems the next way to accelerate reading rate is to figure a way to remove the necessity for eye movement at all. The rate has been experimentally proven to be able to go to 1100 to 1600 words per minutes (roughly a word every 40 ms). So a factor of 3 to 4 X read speed.
Ok that might be the optimal device to read Tweets (imagine the marketing - read Tweets 4X faster with this device).
I did in the mid 80's made on my atari a 24 hours novel "Sliding towards Extreme-Darkness" that was meant for a Dick Tracy like watch with word by word playback. I later in the 1990's converted it to a multi-line auto scroll player as I often in practice need to reread a few sentences. Also when reading non-fiction we tend to scan a page, read short section here and another one there, so there is a sort of multi-resolution assimilation scheme. At some level, the first thing we do with non-fiction is an high-level scan - this seems to be a book about the state of Borneo, it has some historical anecdotes, talks here and there about baboons... this could though be defined as a sort of pre-reading to almost decide if we actually want to read more or stop.
Also I am noting that we probably could optimize this in a word by word display by displaying words like "is" with other words
Smart Bailando - RSVP wuth gaze detect
Other things: As we discussed elsewhere there is some variance here (optimal font size function of distance to eye, clarity of vision at fovea center,...).
We also discussed already the idea of logical sentence chunking to accomodate that although the actual text imprint can be over a very short interval, the internal processing of meaning from that is a pipeline over something like 1/2 sec and with as we know the capacity to inner loop (ring) the short term memory buffered (as in "I get it..." when one does not right away laungh from a joke)..
We also discussed in Speed Reading how not hearing the words in your head is the key to read faster. (the grapheme/morpheme decomposition) - if you listen to the silent voice you increase the amount of processing for no functional reason at least for comprehension. Apparently some people have better retention when they listen to a voice then read a text.
I have not studied RSVP readers yet but my primitve research also tells me that we would benefit of a finger pressing interface, not just to regress (reread) but also to explicitely pause at the end of logical sentences. We might all be different but I tend to burst mentally here and need quick regular break so I never do as good with lectures I can't pause and continue (or book on tapes for that matter). Somewhat though conversational natural pauses in radio broadcast works though. Note that both pathways are working in parallel and reinforce each others, we do access speech sounds when reading words, all I am saying is if you internally can become conscious of an inner voice reading the words that means you have slowed down at the rhythm of clear elocution. As in speech-to-sound is slow and possibly inefficient. Much like spelling out the letters when reading.
Again all this varies per literature type. Poetry does play with word spelling and sounds (food - bud - blood) particularly when it is constrained to rhyme.
Additional Notes:
ERRATA: Apparently I did a mistake in the book, I attribute to (Saint-) Augustine the invention of reading silently. Apaprently in Augustine Confessions Book Six Chapter 3, he instead discuss of Ambrose whose heart sought out the meaning of the page, but his voice was silent and his tongue was still. So he got the idea of not reading aloud from Ambrose.
There has been spelling reform success. We discussed japanese conversion before. Another one is the turkish 1928-29 conversion to roman alphabet, simplification of spelling and teaching to a first 3 millions people.
Somewhere I discuss simplified languages and limited communications in basic english or tourist any language... one thing I forgot is we have a tremendous amount ot common knowledge of brands. I live in Martinez near San Francisco. These proper nouns words as far as I know are the same in every language, same with most brands from "pepsi" to "adidas". The result of this being that even inner-city retards probably have way over 50 000 words of vocabulary.
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