âYea, yea, but your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could that they didnât stop to think if they should.â
â Ian Malcolm, Jurassic Park.
 The developers of âSpritzâ tout it as âan insane new appâ that allows you to read 1,000 words per minute. I was somewhat surprised that the appâs developers and I have precisely the same assessment of the technology, since Iâm not a fan and they are the people who are trying to sell it.
1. in a state of mind that prevents normal perception, behavior, or social interaction; seriously mentally ill. âcertifying patients as clinically insaneâ
synonyms:mentally ill, mentally disordered, of unsound mind, certifiable.
This is a freaking milestone for truth in advertising. At least if you take it at face value.
Iâm sure they mean âinsaneâ as in âcheck out how insane I am with my skateboard and bong full of Redbull.â In other words, âWeâre a bunch of middle aged dudes who realized our target audience is our kidsâ ages, so weâre trying to talk all hip and cool, like Shaun White or something, like the marketing consultants told us to.â
First, there is nothing sadder than a dude who looks like this:
âWooooah, Dude, this is totally freaking insane!â
. . . talking like that. I know, because I look a hell of a lot more like the guy in that picture than whatever caricature of an awesome hipster stoner dude heâs trying to channel.  Itâs still funny, though, because my biggest criticism of Spritz stems from the fact that it is insane â it quite literally, forces you to read âin a state of mind that prevents normal perception.â
Spritz is a concept that takes some of the science we covered in What the Reader Really Sees on the Page, and ignores the rest of the science behind how we read, in the name of reading faster. The app flashes text on the screen, one word at a time, at rates up to 1,000 words per minute. It looks like this:
First off, that is 500 words a minute. Although they claim their mentally imbalanced insane app lets you read twice that fast, none of the posted examples actually go that high. They go half that high, which should probably tell you something âparticularly if you find 500 WPM version as annoying as I do. There is no fucking way I could be bombarded like that for two or three hours.
But, thatâs what it is (at 50% power, anyway).
The Spritz people make all sorts of claims on their website and in their marketing materials. Their explanation is summarized on their webpage, which states:
Traditional reading involves publishing text in lines and moving your eyes sequentially from word to word. For each word, the eye seeks a certain point within the word, which we call the âOptimal Recognition Pointâ or ORP. After your eyes find the ORP, your brain starts to process the meaning of the word that youâre viewing. With each new word, your eyes move, called a âsaccadeâ, and then your eyes seek out the ORP for that word. Once the ORP is found, processing the word for meaning and context occurs and your eyes move to the next word. When your eyes encounter punctuation within and between sentences, your brain is prompted to assemble all of the words that you have read and processes them into a coherent thought.
When reading, only around 20% of your time is spent processing content. The remaining 80% is spent physically moving your eyes from word to word and scanning for the next ORP. With Spritz we help you get all that time back.
Some of the words theyâre throwing around probably sound familiar if you read this blog. Much of what they are saying, when it comes to the process of how we read, is absolutely true. We move our eyes in saccades, hopping from word to word. We have a focal point (where your fovea is pointed). Our eyes find a point in the word that allows our brain to best process it (what they are calling the âORPâ).
Much of what theyâre saying is blatantly misleading, though. For starters, itâs not like you have time to order a pizza while your eye is looking for a place to focus (the âORPâ) in the next word. Your brain already found it and told your eye where to go while you were reading the previous word. Thatâs the reason we see seven or eight letters ahead of the four letters we are focused on, regardless of whether we read right to left (e.g., English) or left to right (e.g., Hebrew). If the word is exceedingly familiar and a few letters long (like âandâ) our fovea will never rest on it, itâs already moved to the following word.
I have absolutely no idea where they came up with the â20% of our time reading is spent processing content, and 80% is spent moving our eyesâ thing. I tried to find a study supporting that (the Google machine brings back a lot of Spritz shitz, and nothing else). But the claim is idiotic just on its face. I know, because I read, and the entire time Iâm reading, I have a little movie going on in my head. I havenât had 20% movie, 80% waiting for the next frame of the movie since I stopped having to sound out every freaking word when I was five years old.
While itâs true the rate of eye movements is absolutely the gating issue when it comes to reading speed, they apparently didnât realize that we developed our alphabetic/syllabic system of writing to function with the way we process words. We do so through the auditory faculties in our brains, which have only known âlanguageâ as anything but sound for between 1% and .0025% of the time our species has had language. So I think the Spritzheads have the concept completely backward â our ability to read is not limited by the system we created for communicating in writing, we developed a system of writing that mirrors our ability to convert letters into syllables, syllables into ideas, and âhearâ what the hell is going on in the story.
This whole âwe spend 80% of our time waiting for our eyes to moveâ concept is pure bullshit, and completely ignores the way the brain is planning the next saccade while the fovea is focused on a prior word. Something that spritz stops your brain from doing.
They make a slew of other claims Iâm willing to call bullshit on, too.
This is not ânew.â This technology has been around since the 1970s. The biggest innovation Spritz has to offer is hype.
Humans can talk faster than we normally talk, too, but we speak and, not coincidentally, read at a rate of 200-300 words per minute, which is the maximum rate at which we can communicate in any fashion without diminishing comprehension.
Speaking of comprehension (and speaking of complete bullshit), they claim âstudies have shownâ there is no decrease âand may even be an increaseâ in comprehension with Spritz. They donât cite a single study, though, and thousands of studies have been performed on comprehension. Every reputable study concludes anything faster than 300 WPM comes at a comprehension cost.
Spritz is hyping itself by making claims about how humans read that blend a little bit of science with a whole pile of bullshit to offer a product that has basically been available since eight-track tapes were a thing. They also have to ignore most of the science behind reading â particularly the fact that our brain is processing what the next word is subconsciously while we are reading the prior word â in order to justify their productâs existence. You simply cannot read faster than our writing system is normally read without suffering a decrease in comprehension. You canât even listen to someone talk faster than that without having the same problem. Our language (writing and verbal) are limited by, and have basically developed to work optimally with, our brainâs ability to process and comprehend.
Can you throw more words at someone? You bet. Our ears and eyes can take in hundreds of times more words than our brains can process. If I donât give a shit about comprehension, I can glance at a whole page of a book at once, while ten people are talking and the TV is on.
If, on the other hand, I plan on comprehending the words I am presented with, then 300 is about my max for any given minute of my life.
Not really. Thereâs a reason this technology went the way of the bell-bottomed pants, eight-track tape, and pet rock. for one thing, not all saccades are forward. While the movie in our head is playing at 300 WPM, our eyes will sometimes double-check something we already read. And since we read, talk, and think in what is essentially real-time, reading a novel three times that fast would be âquite literallyâ like watching a movie played in fast forward.
If your goal was to just get through Moby Dick so you could say you read it, but had no intention of enjoying it, I guess it could work. I canât imagine being thrilled you just crushed every poem Maya Angelou ever wrote during one lunch break, but thatâs effectively what Spritz has to offer. Youâd have a level of comprehension somewhere between someone who really read the book and someone who just lied and said âYea, Iâve read Moby dick,â but you could still claim you read it.
If you were reading something you actually need to comprehend, like I do at work all freaking day, I would strongly caution against it. There is just no science that supports the idea that a normal human can comprehend faster than we normally speak and read. If you were reading something for pleasure, well do whatever the hell you want, because what you do for pleasure is up to you. And it could be kinda funny to read 50 Shades that way â just to see all that undressing and screwing happen at three times normal human speed. The lack of retention and comprehension would be an added bonus there, too.
But if your goal is to have more than a vague recollection that you read something and the right to say (at least partially) truthfully âIâve read that book,â Spritz doesnât really bring anything worthwhile to the party. For better or worse, we talk and read and hear and comprehend at a rate of about 300 WPM, max. Anything above that either comes at a cost in comprehension or is, literally, too good to be true. If thatâs even good. Since I like the little mind movies that happen when I read â and donât mind the fact that they arenât all in fast-forward, Iâll just call it bullshit.
