Reading is Fundamental

Yesterday I discovered a remarkable mobile application to enhance reading. The creators have formulated a system that allows them to identify the optimal character in each word that facilitates recognition and comprehension. By using the program, a reader does not have to move her eyes across a screen as the words flash at a predetermined rate indicated by the number of words per minute. The link that demonstrated the program showed how I could quickly go from reading 250 wpm to 500 wpm. The promoters of the method also suggest that reading at this increased rate includes the promise of comprehension and retention.

They may be right. Setting critical analysis and demonstrable data requirements aside, I am simply going to assume their claims that using this method I can increase my reading speed to a level where I can read a novel in 90 minutes instead of 8-10 hours, and allegedly have the same type of comprehension and retention. Wouldn't that be great? Maybe and only sometimes.

I love to read and I can read very quickly. Most of the time I choose not to. I have become much more selective in my reading, which is not to be understood as snooty. Rather, I treasure the time that I have in reading and I prefer to not rush the process. I think I would rather read a book slowly and consider how its insights might fit into the giant puzzle that makes my life experience. Understanding and comprehension form vital parts of the reading, and while they're necessary components for a transcendental experience they are not sufficient.

Personalization and incorporation, defined as the capacity to apply that which you read into your own personal gestalt, requires more than understanding and comprehension. Some information can be readily categorized as it complements already formulated understandings. As I encounter previously unconsidered thoughts and ideas, I need time to assess more than their meaning. I analyze and ponder how those ideas can improve my daily experience through application and deeper vision. Sometimes I successfully incorporate new ideas and they refine my life's experience. Other times I reject proposed notions or place them in a mental cooking pot to stew until a future date when personalization and incorporation might be possible.

Justice Robert Jackson of the United States Supreme Court once wrote, "If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein. If there are any circumstances which permit an exception, they do not now occur to us."  He wrote those sentences in an opinion that redefined the meaning of the First Amendment protection on freedom of religion as it related to a requirement to salute the flag.

Even if I could read that quote at a speed of 500 words per minute, I would rather take an hour.