Research shows that one of the greatest inventions of humanity - reading - could be improved. Scientists are beginning to understand that the tight compression of the characters was a good way to save paper, but those create difficulties for the processing of visual information to the brain.
Reading system we inherited from the ancient books rewriters were suitable for the past centuries, but not suitable for the present information age. While the books were few, until a few people could read, while each word written an important and meaningful, somehow reading pattern defects were not very important.
But today, in the age of computers, when many written words are useless or even misleading when you can instantly download, install and read many books or other documents, even a portable device - our reading limits the possibility of the brain to take over the incoming content. Our time the problem is the inability to transfer information quickly enough to the brain in order to meet their needs.
What design readable looked good before the millennium, it looks good now. Take, for example, in the form of letters and spaces. Centuries ago was created by the printing press, the printing of the book or rewrite lasted a long time. Therefore, the need to work quickly influenced the design of the letters, they were thought up such that they would rather be appended.
Now young people like to write as it was written in the Torah. Although closely crammed characters looked great way to save parchment, now scientists are beginning to understand that such a design create difficulties for the brain to process visual information.
Even in the sixties of the last century Herman Bouma in the Netherlands showed that the closely squeezed objects, like letters, compression hinders the brain to distinguish the objects from each other. For example, let us take a sequence of letters dwzrh k WBP. Can you distinguish it from the letter 'k'? Most could. But if looking at the letter "d" to discern the letters 'k', when it housed: dwzrhkwbp. For most difficult to distinguish.
It shows how the letters compression is limited by the number of letters that we can grasp glance. Such letters compression substantially restrict our reading speed. This understanding of the modern Gutenberg - scientists and technologists - is looking for a solution to improve the reading, to the speed only limited by our brain capabilities.
First of all, people with dyslexia (reading disorder), noted that the shortened lines of text and an increase in the space between the letters, they read faster computer or a mobile phone screen. Short lines can help people to keep on reading and helps keep track of the text.
Shortening the lines are not the only way of maintaining focus. Better focus helps to maintain different colored line or one word after another flashing on the computer screen. The brain of the text can pull useful information in 15 milliseconds, while the eye turn to follow the words of the line requires 200 milliseconds. Which can increase the reading speed of more than 10 times.
Reading was created to speed up the language, but the text is limited understanding of reading the brain's ability to process information quickly. Normally we talk slower than read - about 150-200 words per minute.
Laurianne Vagharchakian in France in 2012 showed that a computer language and squeezed run about 600 words per minute people are able to understand the language. But even by increasing the speed of the language, they already understand. The examination of brain scans quickly became clear terms that the brain areas that process language becomes saturated with the speech speed exceeds a certain limit.
As the reading speed is limited by the speed of information processing in the brain, how can we expect to develop technology for the growing flow of information to make? Scientists seek to activate additional reading feeds the brain that allow the brain to process information in parallel (like a computer), and thus increase information processing capabilities.
It is said that the brain is plastic, that can change their abilities. Zvia Breznitz with colleagues from Israel's Haifa University found that people can be gradually trained to read twice as fast - brain adapts.
Research shows that the least efficient way of reading is such a society ages cling followed - reading from paper. Thus, the ancient way of reading more inappropriate for modern computer-saturated society. It uses only a part of the brain to process information access.
Technology allows you to change the text for the brain and its processing, so shortly modern Gutenberg teach us to read the screens of computers and phones faster and more efficiently. In the past, readers evolution took thousands of generations of people. The emergence of information technology is very likely that reading will change a single generation.
