Jun
5
Speed Listening
June 5, 2006 |
I used to commute 3 hours a day and, in order to feel that my driving time wasn’t being wasted, I subscribed to Audible.com. Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand is a wonderful narrative that spanned more than 50 hours of driving time. I would never have had the time to ‘read’ it otherwise.
The other day it occurred to me that two major drawbacks of listening to a book is the inability to skim contents and the difficulty of referring back to a previous point of interest. Then I remembered that my iPod has a feature that allows one to speed up, or slow down, an Audible narrative without distorting the narrator’s voice. I adjusted my setting and found myself listening to On Intelligence
“On Intelligence” (Jeff Hawkins, Sandra Blakeslee)
with a heightened degree of concentration. I was accustomed to processing the audio input at normal conversational speed and was finding the new pace challenging. I thought I might soon become accustomed to the faster pace but I found the additional effort tiring. I adjusted the narrative setting back to normal. ‘Speed listening’ isn’t for me.
Comments
Current Reading
`
