It’s probably safe to say that there are moments we wish we could just zip through a book and have all of its content in our brain. You could learn how to speed read, but doing so means taking time to learn and maintain your speed reading skills.
Source: 7speedreadingreview
Of course, you could always turn to audiobooks so you can process the content while you are doing other things. However, not everyone is able to process information via spoken word, and if you really wanted to optimize it, you’d have to listen to the audiobook at 1.2 speed. Even then if you really wanted to enjoy the nuances of the audiobook, you’d really have to sit down and block time out of your day to process it. The point is, regardless of how you look at it, finding a way to absorb the information contained in a book into your brain takes time.
Source: Book Riot
But imagine if you could simply download the contents of an entire book into your brain. Imagine if instead of having to sit down and take the time to try to process a book, you could simply plug in and have the information available.
Doesn’t that sound amazing? That’s the future Ray Kurzweil, noted futurist, says is possible. With new developments in nanotechnology, we could be well on our way to being able to transmit the content of various books straight into our brains. Imagine a process that usually takes weeks suddenly being something that could be near instantaneous.
But before we all upload the list of books we haven’t read, we may need to slow down a bit. For one, we’re still fairly far away from attaining such fantastic technology. Secondly, as convenient as it would be to simply have instant access to a book, it is at this juncture we must ask ourselves, to what end?
After all there is more to reading a book than simply memorizing every word. Having instant access content is not the same as understanding what is in your brain. Even if you can pull up a direct quote on command, that doesn’t mean you comprehend it. In order to achieve that level of understanding you still need to process the words that are now uploaded into your brain.
Source: Evil English
This brings us full circle back to wanting to find a faster way to read a book. It turns out reading faster only helps if our sole objective is to efficiently transfer content straight to our brain. However, if the reason we read is for understanding, then uploading books isn’t nearly as helpful as we may think.
At the end of the day, finding your own interpretation and understanding of a book is still going to take time. There may never be a piece of technology that could speed up our ability to understand and enjoy a book. So perhaps there is no true replacement for actually sitting down and taking time out of your day to read that novel you’ve been meaning to get to.
Regardless of the technological advances that are coming, there may never be a true replacement for simply sitting down and reading a physical book.
YouTube Channel: Seeker
Featured image via Think Outloud
h/t Bloomberg
