Danny Ayers pointed me at Trevor Smith's speed reader applet loaded with Cory's new book, Eastern Standard Tribe. I tried it out for 5 minutes and got through 3% of the book. Not bad. I've got the hardcover and this is actually something, I'd rather savor than rush through since Cory is thought provoking, so I'll read it the old fashion way, but I think the idea has promise.

The applet shows you the words one at a time and let you control how fast they come. You can move pretty fast. This would be ideal on a Palm for example. I can imagine some better control, so that I can pause easily and even adjust the font size. Like most things, eBooks probably won't catch on by trying to reproduce the physical experience in electronic media, they'll catch on by giving us a whole new way of doing the old thing in the new media. This speed reader idea is an example of how that might come to pass.