The speed of modern life is 2.3 words per second, or about 100,000 words a day. That is the verbiage bombarding the average (American) person in the 12 hours they are typically awake and ‘consuming’ information, according to a new study ‘How Much Information?’ by the University of California, San Diego.

The average American consumes 100,000 words, or about 34 gigabytes of information, every day

More great insights from the study:
– Americans read less print media as an overall percentage of their information consumption, but they’re actually reading more than ever in quantity.
– From 1980 to 2008, the number of bytes we consume has increased 6 percent each year. Over 28 years, that’s a 350 percent increase.
– Video game consumption saw the biggest leap in time spent. That’s not just video games as you know them, but also games on your phone and on social media sites such as Facebook.

Evolution of reading 1960-2008

The Global Language Monitor documents, analyzes and tracks trends in language the world over, with a particular emphasis upon Global English. For example, English passed the 1,000,000 threshold on June 10, 2009 at 10:22 am GMT. A US web monitoring firm has declared the millionth English word to be Web 2.0, a term for the latest generation of web products and services. English gains a new word every 98 minutes (or about 14.7 new words a day).
The Top Words of 2009
1. Twitter — The ability to encapsulate human thought in 140 characters
2. Obama — The word stem transforms into scores of new words like ObamaCare
3. H1N1 — The formal (and politically correct) name for Swine Flu
4. Stimulus — The $800 billion aid package meant to help mend the US economy
5. Vampire — Vampires are very much en vogue, now the symbol of unrequited love
6. 2.0 — The 2.0 suffix is attached to the next generation of everything
7. Deficit — Lessons from history are dire warnings here
8. Hadron — Ephemeral particles subject to collision in the Large Hadron Collider
9. Healthcare — The direction of which is the subject of intense debate in the US
10. Transparency — Elusive goal for which many 21st c. governments are striving

The Top Words of the Decade, as part of its annual global survey of the English language.
The Top Words were ‘Global Warming’, 9/11, and Obama followed by Bailout, Evacuee, and Derivative; Google, Surge, Chinglish, and Tsunami followed. “Climate Change” was the top phrase, while “Heroes” was the top name; bin-Laden was No. 2.

0.2 – the time in seconds taken by the brain to identify a written word.

With online ordering, high-street chain discounts, (Borders closing down), recession – the future of traditional bookshops doesn’t look great. But according to The Bookseller there is a rise of the boutique bookshops. 34 new independent bookshops were open in the UK this year. In one bookshop in Notting Hill coffee is served in china cups and literary-inspired perfumes are sold with the Austen and Tolken. Down the road, Cinephilia West has a screening room, while Phaidon’s pop-up bookshop in Piccadilly is coffee-table-book nirvana. New bread of bookshops offering everything from cosy reading room to home-made biscuits. This is a return of book-buying as an enchanting experience.

The right diet can help with learning

Happy foods for boosting memory, learning power and concentration are bananas (excellent source of starchy carbohydrate, which encourages production of the ‘happy hormone’ serotonin), green vegetables such as broccoli, cabbage, spinach and nuts and seeds (great source of magnesium, which helps the body to make serotonin). Other serotonin producing foods are sardines, foie gras and cottage cheese. Of course, chocolate is the one snack that everyone knows instinctively will give them a lift. Chocolate, especially the dark, good quality organic variety, contains high quantities of phenols, antioxidants that boost mood, and N-acylethanoloamine chemicals, which stimulate the brain to release endorphins. But chocolate is fattening, so the key is to have a piece or tow, not a whole bar. Maintaining hydration is crucial to ensure an even mood. Even small decreases  in hydration levels can leave your feeling grumpy. Keep water to hand to top up fluids regularly. Based on research published in the British Journal of Psychiatry (BJP) last week.

Call it the Doom learning effect. Volunteers who played the shoot ’em up video game dreamed about monsters and guns. Such reveries have now been found to predict higher scores the following day, backing the idea that dreams function to consolidate learning.  Read more on the role of sleep in learning

1. The CIA Factbook
This offshoot of the American intelligence agency’s site gives a detailed overview of every country. It also provides information on the history, people, government, economy, geography, communications, transportation, military, and transnational issues for 266 world entities.

2. Biography.com
The website of the Biography Channel is an excellent place to gen up on historical figures and celebrities, while its “Dead Or Not” game shows that beyond a necessary obsession with factual accuracy it has a fun side, too.

3. Onelook.com
Type in a word or phrase and OneLook will offer a quick definition and link to reputable online sources, such as the Cambridge and Hutchinson dictionaries. Wildcard searches, meanwhile – where you need only key in a few words from a word – make it invaluable for Scrabble players and crossword solvers.

4. Onlineconversion.com
Sorted by more than 30 categories, from astronomical units to viscosity, this converts one unit of measurement to another. Google can do something similar – type “20kg in ounces” into the search box, for example -but this site is far more comprehensive.

5. 1911encyclopedia.org
The full 1911 version of the Encyclopaedia-Britannica is now online. Particularly interesting are the accounts of historical figures written while they were alive.

6. Britannica.com
Online access to the modern Britannica costs £49.95 a year, but that compares with £450 for the full set of 32 volumes. More comprehensive than Wikipedia, it also features thousands of audio and video clips.

7. About.com
About was set up in 1996 and can now call on a network of more than 750 experts to answer users’ questions. More than 60m people visit the site each month looking for help on pretty much anything.

8. Specialissues.com/lol
A collection of links to lists that have appeared somewhere in the world’s press. If you need to know the planet’s most valuable 15 football teams, head there.

9. Lii.org
The Librarians’ Internet Index is a US organisation with a collection of links to ‘websites you can trust’. The history and politics ones are a little US-centric, arts and science links are more comprehensive.

10. www.WhatsOnWhen.com
This lists upcoming event from all over the world. Search by date, destination, type of event, keyword or a combination of them all, and maybe discover that your trip to Tahiti coincides with its annual Tarantino week.

It’s not elegant and it’s not sexy – it looks like a large photocopier – but the Espresso Book Machine is being billed as the biggest change for the literary world since Gutenberg invented the printing press more than 500 years ago and made the mass production of books possible. Launched at Blackwell’s Charing Cross Road branch in London, the machine prints and binds books on demand in five minutes, while customers wait. It offers the best of both worlds: the virtually unlimited choice of books on the Internet and the traditional book format. In short, ATM for books.

Do we read less in recession? Publishing has suffered in the downturn, though not as much as one might think. In fact, over the past eight years, the umber of books bought in the UK has risen by nearly 50 per cent to just under 240 million. Adult non-fiction – now makes up 40 per cent of the sales, eclipsing fiction, which accounts for just 30 per cent (the remaining 30 per cent is accounted for by children’s books). In the graphic below, each full-sized book represents about 225,000 books purchased, meaning that in 2007 – our tallest shelf – the nation bought just under 23 million books across the genres selected. Some of the trends are clear. Su Doku – in “Puzzles” – catapults into the mainstream in 2005. Celebrity chefs continue their rise. Biographies and autobiographies spike in 2006, mostly because a lot of high-profile names among them Gordon Ramsey, Sharon Osbourne and Steven Gerrard – had books published. Then there are the small victories, such as Does Anything Eat Wasps?, a compendium of New Scientist columns, which in 2006 almost single-handedly increased sales of popular science books by 50 per cent.

Reading trends 2001-2008 – sales of books in the UK

On the shelf statistics: of the 40m titles in US libraries about 8m are out of copyright and 32m are still covered in copyright. Of these 32m, about 7m-9m are in print and 23m-25m are out of print. Of the23m-25m out-of-print titles still covered by copyright, about 2.5m-5m are ‘orphan works’ (copyright holders cannot be traced). Google wants to digitalise all books. Why?  Read the full article in FT online

When we read books, our brains process the written information as if we were participating in or observing the scene for real. “Psychologists and neuroscientists are increasingly coming to the conclusion that when we read a story and really understand it, we create a mental simulation of the events described by the story.” says Professor Jeffrey Zacks, director of the Dynamic Cognitive Laboratory at Washington University in St Louis. Read more about this study

Getting into a good state for speed reading is essential. Having a relaxed, alert, questioning, purposeful mind is the ideal state for reading if you want to understand and remember information. Many of the other speed reading techniques that we teach are also designed to get your mind and body in an optimal state for reading. The latest research backing up relaxation as the key to learning comes from Goldsmiths College in London and the Austrian Academy of Science where they studied the brain rhythms of 25 volunteers  while they were asked to solve verbal problems. Those who displayed higher alpha brain waves – associated with a relaxed brain – were more likely to find the correct solution to the problem. Download our 37 speed reading techniques now

Nanette’s Spd Rdng answer: We do a two-day course without software and people walk away on the Sunday evening being able to do everything. (It’s better to learn in an intensive burst.) You don’t need to practise the techniques – you just need to do them. The more you do them in the course of your normal reading, the better you get. Everyone we’ve had on Spd Rdng courses (which include photoreading, speed reading and additional strategies using an accelerated learning approach so it’s all easy to learn) in the last three years has at least doubled their reading speed in those two days – and has loads of additional techniques which save much more time (typically getting info 10 times faster than before).

You can get a free download of the 37 techniques we teach (or contact me for more info) from our Spd Rdng website https://spdrdng.com

Nanette’s Spd Rdng answer: Lots of the Spd Rdng techniques that we teach are about getting information, but you can also read novels faster – and ‘get it’! Most people read as if they’re driving a car in first gear all the time. Much better to be able to vary the speed at which you read – so if you enjoy reading slowly, you’ll be able to do that too. Go for it – it’s fun to be able to do it – and it certainly beats getting dragged down by those piles of books, reports and journals that sit there making you feel guilty.

Nanette’s Spd Rdng answer: Learn speed reading as well. Speed reading is about reading traditionally but faster. And in addition to both photoreading and speed reading, it makes sense to have (conscious, easy) strategies for remembering what you read, strategies for evaluating books, knowing WHY you’re reading, getting an overview of a subject before going into detail, etc.

Nanette’s Spd Rdng answer: No. But you need to understand what it can and can’t do.

Nanette’s Spd Rdng answer: Yes. But do speed reading as well. Oddly enough, reading faster helps comprehension, because you’ve got more information more quickly for the brain to make sense of. Spd Rdng courses teach photoreading, speed reading and additional techniques to speed up access to information, memory and comprehension.

Just answered some questions on yahoo – thought I’d share them here.

Is photoreading a scam?

Nanette’s Spd Rdng answer: No. The non-conscious mind takes in all the information – but you don’t know it consciously, so it doesn’t feel as if you’ve learnt anything. Also, although the info goes straight to your long-term memory, it is only activated by need (need determined by your non-conscious mind, not your conscious mind – the bit that likes to think it’s on control). It therefore works best if you do in together with some conscious (eg speed reading) techniques.

By reading Shakespeare – which has dramatic effect on human brain

They function to uphold social order and spread altruistic genes, according to evolutionary psychologists. While the romantic era helped us evolve into more virtuous beings, reading Shakespeare can boost our brainpower. Shakerspeare used a technique known as functional shift, which involves making an adjective or a noun into a verb. In The Winter’s Tale, heavy thoughts are said to ‘thick my blood’. Researchers at Liverpool University revealed this technique causes a spark in the brain activity, as we’re forced to understand what a word means before we comprehand the function of it within a sentence. Source University of Liverpool

The effect of functional shift on the brain. Credit: University of Liverpool

We’re presenting at ANLP Conference 13-15 November 2009, London
Sat 14 November 18.00 – 19.30 Top Ten Speed Reading Techniques

Learn the key techniques which turn ordinary readers into speed readers. Double your reading speed by the end of the workshop – and walk away with both the tools and the understanding to distil the knowledge and wisdom from the masters in less than a tenth of the time it would take with traditional reading. For more info on the ANLP Conference

It’s official: The iPhone is more popular than Amazon Kindle. And not just in the obvious categories like listening to music, surfing the net or the other applications where Kindle barely competes. Now, the iPhone is also muscling into Amazon’s home turf: reading ebooks.
Stanza, an ebook reading application offered in Apple’s iPhone App Store since July, has been downloaded more than 395,000 times and continues to be installed at an average rate of about 5,000 copies a day, according to Portland, Ore.-based Lexcycle, the three-person start-up that created the reading software.

iPhone eBook Reader App – Stanza

The future of speed reading e-books
Stanza, like Kindle, lets users download new content directly to their device. It has a snappy interface that allows readers to flip through a book simply by tapping the edges of the page and responds far faster than Kindle’s poky E-ink screen, which takes about a second to turn pages. And then there’s what some may call Stanza’s unfair advantage: the application is free, as are its many titles.

Download Stanza ebook reader for iPhone

We’ve received a question today – here it is with our answer

“Friends are like a book: they open up the whole world for us. But they can be divided into good and bad. The right sort can help you, but the bad sort will bring you a great deal of trouble and may even lead you down the wrong road. Being able to choose your friends wisely is extremely important.” Confucius as interpreted by Yu Dan, author of Confucius from the Heart

An NLP modelling project by Tom O’Connor – NLP TIMES (NLP Videos and Trainings)

NLP meta-programs are perceptions and mindsets and behavioural patterns that operate at an other-than-conscious level. Meta-programs are filters through which we perceive the world. An example is an old maxim is the glass half full or half empty. By understanding and appreciating other people’s models of the world that may differ dramatically from our own we can learn how to do things better.

NLP meta-modelling of speed reading

Modelling subject: Jan Cisek – Master Reader, PhotoReader, Speed Reader and Spd Rdr

1. Chunk Size: Global vs. Specific

Spd Rdng Student: Global
When spd rdng speed readers tend to go global and take in the big picture. The field of vision is broad and the area of focus tends to be on “Concepts” and “Ideas”, getting a Gestalt view. You sort for information at a global level. Global chunk style tends to lead to deductive processing and permits the speed reader to take large mental quick cuts through large volumes of information. There is quite a high level of generalisation. This differs significantly from a person who’s meta-program who is detail based. They will tend to focus on the low-level information, needing to acquire all the details and feel the need for multiple examples and overlapping of information before they feel they are comfortable with the material.

Continue reading →

Speed reading is about speed as much as about slow reading

With speed reading we create more time to reflect – our reflective intelligence is critical to learning and our moral standards. Read previous post.  In Praise of Slow – How a Worldwide Movement Is Challenging the Cult of Speed by Carl Honore one can learn the importance of taking time to reflect and slow down.

Both me and Nanette can read very fast when we need to. But we take time to read slowely – usually for pleasure. Novels, poetry, philosophy, etc lend themselves to reading slowely. Never before the balance between fast and slow was so important. Spd rdng is like driving a car – sometimes we use the first gear, sometimes the second, the third, the fourth, etc. Most people though read like they would read in the first gear. Speed reading is about changing your gears of reading depending on the context of your reading.

Can reflective intelligence survive in the fast media environment?

Following from the previous post about how the speed of Facebook and Tweeter are shaping our moral compass.

David Perkins (Harvard) thinks that reflective intelligence (RI) is the most important one to learn. It’s being aware of your learning and thinking habits and how to improve them. It’s thinking about thinking – meta-thinking.

What brings me most joy when learning? Why?
What do I not understand?
What can I do to understand better? (Ask a friend)
What is the biggest success / aha moment? Write it down & use symbols.
What works and does not work for me?
The moments of learning…

How to switch on your reflective intelligence?
1.    Notice what is working – write it down

2.    Be grateful – gratitude feedbacks to your subconscious mind what you want and what is important to you

3.   Get inspired and motivated by people’s aha! It stimulates your reflective intelligence and executive functioning. Revitalising. Strangely Twitter can be used to post those inspiring AHA! moments – follow us on http://twitter.com/Spdrdng

New research suggests that fast social portals can be damaging to us – especially young people who’s brains are still developing.

‘If things are happening too fast, you may not ever fully experience emotions about other people’s psychological states and that would have implications for your morality,’ said researcher Mary Helen Immordino-Yang, from the University of Southern California. Brain imaging tests showed that humans can respond in fractions of a second to signs of physical pain in others; but admiration and compassion – two of the social emotions which define humanity – take much longer. Digital media may direct users away from traditional avenues for learning about humanity, such as literature or face-to-face interactions, Ms Immordino-Yang added. ‘When it comes to emotion, because these systems are inherently slow, perhaps all we can say is, not so fast,’ said Antonio Damasio, who led the research. Antonio Damasio, director of the Brain and Creativity Institute at the University of Southern California, who led the research said: “What I’m more worried about is what is happening in the abrupt juxtapositions that you find, for example, in the news. He said the research was vital because admiration, “gives us a yardstick for what to reward in a culture, and for what to look for and try to inspire”. Mr Damasio said that Barack Obama, who was inspired by his father, showed how admiration could drive a person onto great things, adding: “We actually separate the good from the bad in great part thanks to the feeling of admiration. It’s a deep physiological reaction that’s very important to define our humanity.”

Is it possible to read faster with increased comprehension?

It may seem counter-intuitive but reading faster equates with comprehending more. In fact, individuals who read at slower rates are likely to comprehend less. It makes sense when you realise that the more information your mind has the more it will comprehend. Our advice is always to read faster in order to understand more. The brain-friendly way to more understanding is to get the big picture of the subject first. Reading faster, reading more will give you a bigger picture.