Why Speed Hacks Failed

In response to distraction, we tried to outrun it.

Speed-reading techniques, summaries, compression tools-each promised to help us “keep up.” Some offered short-term gains. Many quietly hollowed out the very thing they claimed to preserve.

Speed without comprehension is not reading.
Efficiency without integration does not lead to insight.

The problem was never that reading was too slow. It was that we stopped valuing what slowness allowed: nuance, judgment, reflection, memory. By treating reading as throughput, we reduced it to consumption-and then wondered why it no longer nourished us.