Bionic Reading

jro11 · Jun 6, 2024

I hope this topic might be of interest to folk who do a lot of technical reading and investigation.

I do a lot of reading. A lot of that reading is done on my computer and most of it is technical. Web pages, and (especially) pdf formatted technical articles, form the majority of this material I have to skim and read. But I’m older and reading lines of nonfiction plain text can be tiresome to my eyes and brain.

I’ve found something called Bionic Reading to be extremely helpful. I found it immediately allowed me to read more quickly and with more comprehension. Bionic reading is relatively new, and it has been difficult to find tools I can use to implement it—especially applying it to pdf texts. Bionic reading can be implemented through browser extensions and some apps but until recently they’ve been few and limited (i.e., some don’t apply to pdf files; some lack sophistication) and gimmicky. (Note: Bionic reading ‘works’ by bolding selected text in longer words so as to encourage the eyes to move more quickly from one word to the next. Though the method was ‘discovered’ in 2022 by a Swiss typographic designer named Renato Casutt it doesn’t seem that it has expanded in complexity or capability by say allowing the user to designate the length of boldface text in the words; whether more than one section of text might be boldfaced; whether it should be limited to syllables; which words and word types might be skipped, etc.)

I hope this subject might be helpful and of interest to you. (Note: I understand that Bionic Reading has not been 'proven' effective and people might be tempted to say that because it hasn't undergone rigorous testing it doesn’t work. Nonetheless, I personally feel it's benefited me greatly.)

Can you please relate your experiences with Bionic Reading and direct us to various Bionic Reading tools you feel have helped you.

Thanks

kelper · Jun 6, 2024

Here's an independent review.


https://blog.readwise.io/bionic-reading-results/

I think experimenting with different fonts and font sizes might yield better results!

jimbo45 · Jun 6, 2024

jro11 said:
I hope this topic might be of interest to folk who do a lot of technical reading and investigation.

I do a lot of reading. A lot of that reading is done on my computer and most of it is technical. Web pages, and (especially) pdf formatted technical articles, form the majority of this material I have to skim and read. But I’m older and reading lines of nonfiction plain text can be tiresome to my eyes and brain.

I’ve found something called Bionic Reading to be extremely helpful. I found it immediately allowed me to read more quickly and with more comprehension. Bionic reading is relatively new, and it has been difficult to find tools I can use to implement it—especially applying it to pdf texts. Bionic reading can be implemented through browser extensions and some apps but until recently they’ve been few and limited (i.e., some don’t apply to pdf files; some lack sophistication) and gimmicky. (Note: Bionic reading ‘works’ by bolding selected text in longer words so as to encourage the eyes to move more quickly from one word to the next. Though the method was ‘discovered’ in 2022 by a Swiss typographic designer named Renato Casutt it doesn’t seem that it has expanded in complexity or capability by say allowing the user to designate the length of boldface text in the words; whether more than one section of text might be boldfaced; whether it should be limited to syllables; which words and word types might be skipped, etc.)

I hope this subject might be helpful and of interest to you. (Note: I understand that Bionic Reading has not been 'proven' effective and people might be tempted to say that because it hasn't undergone rigorous testing it doesn’t work. Nonetheless, I personally feel it's benefited me greatly.)

Can you please relate your experiences with Bionic Reading and direct us to various Bionic Reading tools you feel have helped you.

Thanks

Hi there
This is one area where maybe a bit of DECENT A.I could work -- if you feed into the A.I the technical document and ask it to make a sensible abstract of the things that you want / need then you might get a better document.

We probably are a bit away from that sort of A.I currently but IMO this is an area well worth keeping an eye on. Another one are those endless pages of legal conditions on all sorts of things which few rarely bother to read - with sometimes financial costs incurred because a condition hidden in tiny font on page 74 of "Terms and conditions" wasn't noticed. !!! Decent A.I should be able to produce all the salient points that a particular user needs.

Unlike many on this Forum I believe A.I has a great future -- whether Ms is the company to do it though is questionable.

Cheers
jimbo

hdmi · Jun 6, 2024

jro11 · Jun 6, 2024

jimbo45 said:
This is one area where maybe a bit of DECENT A.I could work -- if you feed into the A.I the technical document and ask it to make a sensible abstract of the things that you want / need then you might get a better document.

Well...yes...encountering writing that's better written is always better. And I completely agree that using AI is tremendously helpful even at this stage. But when it comes to written matter, using language, you still have to read it.

And as regards hdmi's YouTube entry (that I listened to at 1.75x speed) it makes obvious correct and incorrect points, and it would be great if there was definitive proof that BR works for all people, of all ages, in all languages, for all types of reading, in all formats, at all times.... but there will never be...

jro11 · Jun 6, 2024

kelper said:
Here's an independent review.

https://blog.readwise.io/bionic-reading-results/

This is interesting! More interesting than the initial summary/review are the tests you can expose yourself to afterward. (Of course they're limited because they may be more or less interesting to each individual reader.)

And I'm looking forward to reading https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32152051

But there are other areas, not covered in the material I've read so far, that make BR interesting to me:
- BR makes the material I read simply more interesting than if it were just monotonic type monotonic type monotonic type monotonic type monotonic type monotonic type
- BR makes it easier for me to stop and immediately refind material that's just STRUCK me. Faster to review material I've just covered that I may want to immediately review.
- BR seems to make it easier for me to pull interesting material from something I'm reading (and reject the rest) that is essentially dull or uninteresting to me.

jro11 · Jun 6, 2024

AAAARGH!!!

A few days ago I thought I had an extension (app?) that would reformat pdf files "bionically".

Now I can't find any extension that I can use with a pdf file!

I've configured pdf to open in Chrome and in Chrome have the following (all available) extensions...

and none of them seem to be able to affect the pdf file.

Ghot · Jun 6, 2024

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/lee-majors-dishes-on-six-million-dollar-man-role-1.1001342

jro11 · Jun 7, 2024

And I just saw The Fall Guy last night!
(Lee Majors was in it.)

hdmi · Jun 7, 2024

jro11 said:
And as regards hdmi's YouTube entry (that I listened to at 1.75x speed) it makes obvious correct and incorrect points,

This begs the obvious question, which are the points that you feel are the incorrect ones? (...And why?)

jro11 said:
and it would be great if there was definitive proof that BR works for all people, of all ages, in all languages, for all types of reading, in all formats, at all times.... but there will never be...

Of course there will never be. That also is why the guy in the video didn't claim that there should ever be. The main takeaway was that there are those who are making money by making extraordinary claims about how reality looks like, and, all the while, the reality is that these same individuals haven't actually even tried to come up with any evidence of any kind whatsoever. So, add more smoke and mirrors to the room that you sit in when you read. See if that helps to greatly improve your reading speed.

jro11 · Jun 7, 2024

hdmi said:
This begs the obvious question, which are the points that you feel are the incorrect ones? (...And why?)

Yes it does beg the question, and while I was listening I was taking notes and... then decided that I didn't care that it hadn't gotten a 'scientific imprimatur' All I knew was that I have been helped (I can feel my eye moving faster and what I was looking at making me want to mosey along... and would've loved to manipulate the various bionic parameters to see how they'd enhance the experience

hdmi said:
So, add more smoke and mirrors to the room that you sit in when you read. See if that helps to greatly improve your reading speed.

I doubt smoke or mirrors would enhance anything at all. Those are things people add to carnival events to confuse people.
I just know BR has helped me.

hdmi · Jun 7, 2024

jro11 said:
I can feel my eye moving faster

I can feel my eye moving faster as Frodo moves closer to Mount Doom. I also know that it's just a fantasy tale, but I don't care because the whole philosophy behind the act of caring is so 2019.

jro11 · Jun 7, 2024

hdmi said:
I can feel my eye moving faster

I can dig it.

Ghot · Jun 7, 2024

hdmi said:
I can feel my eye moving faster as Frodo moves closer to Mount Doom. I also know that it's just a fantasy tale, but I don't care because the whole philosophy behind the act of caring is so 2019.

I just finished reading the Lord of the Rings, again, two days ago.

TraderGary · Jun 7, 2024

Ghot said:
I just finished reading the Lord of the Rings, again, two days ago.

I too am on my second reading of the Lord of the Rings. I have it on Kindle in one volume and am currently on page 252 of 1576.

Ghot · Jun 7, 2024

TraderGary said:
I too am on my second reading of the Lord of the Rings. I have it on Kindle in one volume and am currently on page 252 of 1576.

I have the boxed set of books.
I've probably read the set... 150 times over the years.

Only read this set about 25 times I guess, but I've been reading these books for almost 60 years...

Probably my favorite books of all time. Any time the stress starts to mount... I read them again.

TraderGary · Jun 7, 2024

I too have the hardbound book set. I started reading on Kindle a few years back and I can't tell you how valuable it is to click on names like Isildur, Denethor, Saruman, etc. and immediately have a dialog box appear that explains the character and how he fits in to the narrative. I love Kindle.

Ghot · Jun 7, 2024

TraderGary said:
I too have the hardbound book set. I started reading on Kindle a few years back and I can't tell you how valuable it is to click on names like Isildur, Denethor, Saruman, etc. and immediately have a dialog box appear that explains the character and how he fits in to the narrative. I love Kindle.

I'm the opposite. I like... regular books.
I think we're slowly losing our ability to "remember" things, in this digital age.

Back in the '80s and before, I used to remember 100's of phone numbers.
Now... the only phone number I know off by heart is my own and on a good day, the local pizza joint.
Because these days... all I need to do is push a button to call someone.

If we ever lose all the data behind our "buttons", we're gonna be in trouble.

TraderGary · Jun 8, 2024

I recall being amazed that my grandson, when he was in high school, did not know his multiplication tables! I recall his saying, "Why do I need to go through all the trouble of memorizing junk like that? I have a calculator on my phone and it's always in my pocket and ready when I need it."

I couldn't argue with that. Heck, I've been totally paperless for the last 20 years. I too always have my smart phone in my pocket and I can dictate a voice note in Microsoft OneNote whenever I need to jot something down. And I can instantly recall in OneNote any note I've made for the past 20 years. And I too use the smart phone calculator all the time.

I've had Kindle since 2012 and now have over 1,200 Kindle books, many of them technical reference books. I have the Kindle app on my smart phone, on my computer, on my tablet, and of course there's my Kindle eReader. I can carry my entire library of 1,200+ books in my pocket.

antspants · Jun 8, 2024

TraderGary said:
I recall being amazed that my grandson, when he was in high school, did not know his multiplication tables! I recall his saying, "Why do I need to go through all the trouble of memorizing junk like that? I have a calculator on my phone and it's always in my pocket and ready when I need it."

I couldn't argue with that. Heck, I've been totally paperless for the last 20 years. I too always have my smart phone in my pocket and I can dictate a voice note in Microsoft OneNote whenever I need to jot something down. And I can instantly recall in OneNote any note I've made for the past 20 years. And I too use the smart phone calculator all the time.

I've had Kindle since 2012 and now have over 1,200 Kindle books, many of them technical reference books. I have the Kindle app on my smart phone, on my computer, on my tablet, and of course there's my Kindle eReader. I can carry my entire library of 1,200+ books in my pocket.

Also, things like sending a text whilst you’re driving, sending an email to your blog to upload a post without taking your eyes off the road. (Just hope nobody road-rages you whilst you’re driving and have Siri hear it).
I gave up counting the practical uses.

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