Rapid Serial Visual Presentation

There's been some recent hype about RSVP, or Rapid Serial Visual Presentation, a technique introduced by K.L.Forster in 1970 (see the introduction here for a survey) with a bunch of Stanford researchers trying to make it a commercial product (BuddyBuzz) for delivering e-books to cellphones.

Mark Russell, Marilyn James, and Andrea Cohlmia, ran an experiment with twenty undergraduate students at Wichita State in 2001. [Link]. Regular reading was compared with RSVP at three different speeds - 250, 450 and 650 words per minute. Unsurprisingly, students preferred the regular method. However, reading comprehension of 250wpm-RSVP was almost the same as that of regular reading. Comprehension dropped with faster speeds, but that is unsurprising given the lack of experience of the subjects.

Experienced users claim to be able to handle 700 wpm.

If you want to play with this, try using GnomeRSVP or some other RSVP reader listed here by Matt Vance of MineZone.

Here's a horrifying thought - unless your are the budget director at the New York Times - you are surfing the web in 2008. All advertising banners now use RSVP. There are several banners on each page. People start paying online newspapers so they don't have to read banners.