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For a very long time, life was limited by the rate at which we spoke. Although we have had writing systems for millennia, early texts were designed to be read aloud, meaning that literature unfolded at the pace of human speech. For years now, podcast and audiobook players have provided speedup options, and research shows that most people prefer listening to accelerated speech. Now Jeff Guo writes at The Washington Post that a new kind of storytelling is emerging as software has made it much easier to watch videos at 1.5x to 2x.
You can play DVDs and iTunes purchases at whatever tempo you like and a Google engineer has written a popular Chrome extension that accelerates most other Web videos, including on Netflix, Vimeo and Amazon Prime. Over 100,000 people have downloaded that plug-in, and the reviews are ecstatic. “Oh my God! I regret all the wasted time I've lived before finding this gem!!” one user wrote. According to Guo speeding up video is more than an efficiency hack. "I quickly discovered that acceleration makes viewing more pleasurable. "Modern Family" played at twice the speed is far funnier — the jokes come faster and they seem to hit harder. I get less frustrated at shows that want to waste my time with filler plots or gratuitous violence. The faster pace makes it easier to appreciate the flow of the plot and the structure of the scenes."
"So here we are," concludes Guo, "spending three hours a day on average, scrambling to keep up with the Kardashians, the Starks, the Underwoods, and the dozens of others on the roster of must-watch TV, which has exploded in the age of fragmented audiences. "Nowadays, to stay on the same wavelength with your different groups of friends — the ones hating on “Meat Chad” and the ones cooing over Khaleesi — you have to watch in bulk."
(Score: 1) by Francis on Sunday June 26 2016, @07:35PM
I think that's sort of the point. If you can genuinely speed the tape up by 2-3x that suggests that there probably wasn't much "story" there to begin with. A lot of genres like comedy and horror depend upon the timing in order to work correctly. And other genres insert pauses where nothing is going on in order to maximize the impact of the narrative.
For programming with little or no value, like Keeping up with the Kardashians, I have no doubt that you could increase the speed to 10 or 20x and still see improvements.
But, for anything that you really enjoy for it's own merits rather than rubber-neck, you're not going to want to speed it up. Programming that's meant to be slurped like that is usually already filmed fast enough. It's why the newscasters in pretty much any country talk so fast.
But, if you really want to go fast, just get a newspaper or a website with text and get the information from there. It's trivial to read at 650 WPM without giving up any of the comprehension. You can go even faster if you don't mind re-reading because you didn't grasp all of it.
(Score: 2) by Max Hyre on Sunday June 26 2016, @09:32PM
(Of course, entertainment [drama, comedy, whatnot] is a different story; I want to savor that.)