Spreeding if Fundementalish

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Spreeding if Fundementalish

POSTED: Tuesday, July 29, 2008, 3:00 PM

Everybody reads. The question is how fast. The other question is: Does everybody read?

The New York Times ran this piece on Sunday about how people aren't really reading like they used to. Kids are more into the web and not as much into books and blah blah blah. I couldn't get through it. Skim the whole thing here.

For a more intriguing, if no less inconclusive (yikes), perspective on the whole Reading: It Still Happens? debate, check out what Sven Birkerts had to say. He's the editor of Agni literary magazine and a devout print man with a million thoughts on the subject. Skip through it all here.

What got me thinking about all this is something ex-Philadelphian Beth Staples had to say at her Hayden's Ferry blog regarding print versus online publishing. "if we know we can — at least to a certain extent — take back or delete what we've put forth online, does it change the seriousness with which we submit it?"

Read the whole thing here (it's short).

Anyway all of that is preamble/excuse for me to direct your attention to a dizzying little device called Spreeder. All you do is copy text from somewhere, paste it into Spreeder and hit play. The words then begin to pop up on screen one at a time, 300 of them per minute. I just gave it a shot and while it didn't lose me, it wasn't exactly comfortable. Still, I can see this thing coming in real handy. A step close to the dream of downloading entire volumes of knowledge into the brain. I want that.

Here's Spreeder.

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Featuring everything from event roundups to concert reviews and sex talk, City Paper's Critical Mass is a space for off-the-wall coverage of Philly's A&E scene.

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