Apps  

Start-up company, Spritz has developed technology designed to remove the “inconvenience” of scrolling, swiping, squinting and pinching to read on your devices by streaming individual words, one by one, at the user’s desired speed. With the system, the developers predict that reading speeds of 1000 words per minute may be attained.

W ant to read all 1200 pages of Atlas Shruggedin a day? You will says a Boston-based start-up company that has been operating in stealth mode for three years. The makers of Spritz have developed a system that allows to read at incredible speeds.

Spritz enables people to read words as they appear one at a time, in rapid succession. With Spritz, you can read anywhere from 250 to 1,000 words per minute.

Spritz allows you to start off at 250 words per minute:

Eventually, though, it’s time to cook with some gas at 350 wpm:

Finally, Spritz’s website currently allows users to go up to 500 wpm:

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While rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP), a familiar way to speed up reading, already exists, Spritz differs in that it focuses on the Optimal Recognition Point, or ORP. Notice the red letter whenever a word passes by? That’s the ORP, or “fixation point.”

Normally, when you read, your eyes hop from word to word, all the while figuring out the meaning of the word. Not only does this take time, but you only spend 20 percent of that reading time on processing whatever content you’re reading. The remaining 80 percent is used to go from word to word while looking for that fixation point, running the risk of skipping shorter words.

By indicating the ORP with red, and positioning each word so the location of the ORP doesn’t change, Spritz allows you to read and process the content while not having your eyes jump from word to word. This differs from RSVP, which simply shows you words in rapid succession without focusing on the ORP.

Soon, you may see the logo pictured above on more and more websites and apps, letting you tap into the Spritz reading system.  For a test, try it out on the company's Blog.

Now, we just need to figure out how to speed up our brains to deal with the flood of information Spritz will allow.



SOURCE  Spritz

By 33rd Square

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 Transhumanism  

Adam Ford recently interviewed Zoltan Istvan, author of the science fiction novel, The Transhumanist Wager.  During the interview, Istvan comments that he intentionally wanted the novel to have a similar effect as Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged.

Scorned by over 500 publishers and literary agents around the world, former National Geographic and New York Times correspondent Zoltan Istvan presents his bestselling visionary novel, The Transhumanist Wager, as a seminal statement of our times.

This indie philosophical thriller has been called “revolutionary” and “socially dangerous” by readers, scholars, and religious authorities. The novel debuts a challenging original philosophy, which rebuffs modern civilization by inviting the end of the human species—and declaring the onset of something greater.

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Set in the present day, The Transhumanist Wager tells the story of Jethro Knights and his unwavering quest for immortality via science and technology. Fighting against him are fanatical religious groups, economically depressed governments, and mystic Zoe Bach: a dazzling trauma surgeon and the love of his life, whose belief in spirituality and the afterlife is absolute.

Exiled from America and reeling from personal tragedy, Knights forges a new nation of willing scientists on the world’s largest seasteading project, Transhumania. When the world declares war against the floating city, demanding an end to its renegade and godless transhuman experiments and ambitions, Knights strikes back, leaving the planet forever changed.

There are deliberate parallels with Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, according to Istvan. Jethro Knights is a modern John Galt, and his seastead, Transhumania is a modern Galt's Gulch.

Jethro is obsessed with and focused on attaining personal immortality via biological life extension and especially mind uploading and eternal cybernetic life.
According to Istvan, "My main goal was to inspire readers with a powerful artistic statement that would challenge their ideas of life and death. The rapid advancement of life extension science and technology will drastically change everything in our society far sooner than most people realize."

Singularity Weblog's Nikola Danaylov says, "This novel is a must read for anyone interested in the future of our civilization."



SOURCE  H+ Magazine

By 33rd Square

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