By Jack Uldrich
Cross-posted from www.jumpthecurve.net
Reading. Most of us do it every day and it is so ingrained from
such an early age that it is difficult to imagine that there is
another way of doing it. Yet, there is.
On Tuesday, I had the opportunity to sit down with Adam Gordon,
the vice-president of marketing for Live Ink, to discuss
his company’s revolutionary new technology—Live
Ink.
Before explaining the technology, however, have you ever
wondered why we read the way we do? That is, why do we read words
in block text – such as you are doing at this very moment.
I am no historical scholar but I suspect the answer goes back
thousands of years and it is partly dependent on writers need to
make efficient use of limited resources. First, stone tablets; then
papyrus and, ultimately, pulp-based paper.
In much the same way that the QWERTY
keyboard has become the de facto way we write on computers – even
though it has been demonstrated that there are more efficient and
faster methods of typing –
the same can be said for how we read. But instead of dealing with
one hundred years of established tradition – as in the case of
QWERTY keyboard – printed text in block
form has been around since Johannes Gutenberg printed off his first
bible.
In the near future, however, the resistance to this long-held
paradigm will begin to fade. I am not suggesting that printed block
text will fade away overnight, but a convergence of technologies
has now created an environment in which a different method of how
we access the written word has been created. (cont.)
Before I go any further let me first invite you to view a visual
demonstration of Live Ink’s technology here. In its
simpliest form, Live Ink displays text in shorter lines; breaks the
text into grammatically meaningful segments; and then indents the
text to cue the brain to key phrases within a given sentence.
What immediately appealed to me about Live Ink’s technology was
the notion that written text as it was historically formatted was
not optimized for the human mind. In other words, while it is true
that we can read long line-by-line text that does not imply that it
is necessarily the best way for the human eye to operate or for the
human mind to comprehend written information.
Until recently there wasn’t much that could be done about this
shortcoming. To make books compact and conserve limited resources,
it helped to cram as many words onto a page as possible. Today,
however, as ever more people access digital information on the Web;
from their cellphones; Kindle-like electronic books; and, soon,
other flexible electronic media, it will make sense to display
information not as “we have always done it,” but rather in a manner
that is easiest, fastest and allows us to retain the most
information.
Company executives don’t make any claims that their technology
improves the rate at which people read; they have, however,
documented how their technology dramatically increases reading
comprehension rates and eases strain on the eye.
I cannot often say with a strong conviction that I have seen the
future; but, in the case of Live Ink, I truly believe I have seen
the future of reading. Within months, I fully expect my website –
and thousands of others – to begin placing a widget on their site
that will allow readers to access written information in a new,
faster and more efficient manner.
(For the record, I am in no way involved with or have a
financial interest in Live Ink.)
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