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Reading, That Strange and Uniquely Human Thing - Issue 94: Evolving - Nautilus
Moving from pictures to the alphabet
- Ancient writing took the leap from drawing a picture as a picture (a logogram) to using it to depict a sound (or phonogram). A "bee" can be used for the sound "be", and when used together with a drawing of a "leaf", they produce the meaning "be-lief."
- But ambiguity arises when we don't know when a bee is a bee, and when is it a sound. Classifiers were added to clear up the confusion. Chinese still uses this system, with pictures, classifier elements, plus phonetics.
- Around 4,000 ago, the alphabet was invented, where symbols only depicted a sound.
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Key Ideas
Research Backed Methods For Faster Reading
Research points to speed reading being a form of skimming, which is appropriate for short text but not for longer ones.
For long texts, reading more
Measurements Of Speed Reading And Comprehension
Although there is an academic consensus that speed-reading decreases comprehension,
On the other hand, the same can’t be said for comprehension measurement techniques, as we can process text differently according to context.
Woody Allen
"I took a course in speed-reading...and was able to read War and Peace in twenty minutes. It's about Russia."
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Key Ideas
The Slowness Rage
Being passively angry while walking due to others being slower than you is a thing. It is called ‘Pedestrian Aggressiveness Syndrome’ and has many degrees of behaviour, each more violent than t...
Slow Life Is A Problem
Slow things are slowly driving us crazy. Society is now on a fast pace, and this has wrapped our sense of timing.
The accelerating pace of society has set off a cycle, resetting our internal timers. Rage for others who are slow eventually sabotages our timers. This is a downward spiral, where will power doesn’t work, and can even be detrimental.
Impatience: The New Virtue
Evolution has given us impatience. We are given the impulse to act, to choose, to abandon or to chase something else, in the limited time we have, instead of spending time in a single unrewarding or slow activity.
Taking into account the speed of communication that is now 10 million times faster than before, and human movement, which is now 100 times faster, we can see society picking up speed and becoming increasingly impatient.
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Key Ideas
A Case For Audiobooks
Old school printed books and e-books sales remain flat in the last five years, while Audiobook sales have shown an increase.
Such figures show that people are shifting towards audio formats o...
Decoding the Written Word
Audiobooks allow the listeners to get the meaning without the use of their eyes, which books require.
Reading as a skill is 'skipped' while listening to audiobooks, though it is ideal for people with dyslexia, those who cannot 'decode' the written word.
Reading Vs Listening
The reading act, which requires focus, and which makes us stop, think and re-read is somehow only confined to books, as a study proves that retention is higher with books than with podcasts.
The audio format also misses some key visual aspects of fonts paragraphs and headings, that are available in books.