Set the chunk size to three for best effect. Just gradually increase it each time, and also try using it occasionally with the speed far too fast. You'll get used to subvocalizing less, and reading multiple words at once.
Of course, for complex texts like the ones you read, it's natural to read much slower. I read 600 WPM for most internet articles, but I'm sure I wouldn't read plato that fast, nor as continuously.
That technique is called Rapid Serial Visual Presentation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapid_Serial_Visual_Presentatio...
(The Wikipedia article should mention saccades (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saccade) but strangely it doesn't.)
I wrote an RSVP reader in the mid-to-late 90s in QuickBasic. I'll have to see if I can dig up that code. :)
I am still annoyed that things like the Kindle don't have that mode.
Has anyone made a syllabic RSVP reader before? Might be interesting to see how much more natural it would be (my hunch is "a lot").
My wife reads 10x faster than I do but completely eschews the kind of reading I like (viz, literature). But of course, now that, y'know, she has kids too, her overall reading speed is strangely reduced as well.
Anyway, at a first glance I found the line coloring helpful.
Very many concepts, words, metaphors, etc come from the King James translation.
Ignoring any religious stuff - it's a good read.
EDIT: corrected my st / king error!
But if you choose to read it as literature, I certainly won't stop you!
A point of view on King Jame Bible: https://bible.org/article/why-i-do-not-think-king-james-bibl...
Besides we have MUCH better access to older sources now, and what do we find? Contradictions, contradictions everywhere.
"It was my resolve to live watchfully, and never use my tongue amiss; still, while I was in the presence of sinners, I kept my mouth gagged, dumb and patient, impotent for good. But indignation came back, and my heart burned within me, the fire kindled by my thoughts, so that at last I kept silence no longer.
"Lord, warn me of my end, and how few my days are; teach me to know my own insufficiency. See how thou hast measured my years with a brief span, how my life is nothing in thy reckoning! Nay, what is any man living but a breath that passes? Truly man walks the world like a shadow; with what vain anxiety he hoards up riches, when he cannot tell who will have the counting of them! What hopes then is mine, Lord? In thee alone I trust. Clear me of that manifold guilt which makes me the laughing-stock of fools, tongue-tied and uncomplaining, because I know that my troubles come from thee; spare me this punishment; I faint under thy powerful hand. When thou dost chasten man to punish his sins, gone is all he loved, as if the moth had fretted it away; a breath that passes, and no more. Listen, Lord to my prayer, let my cry reach thy hearing, and my tears win answer. What am I in thy sight but a passer-by, a wanderer, as all my fathers were? Thy frown relax, give me some breath of comfort, before I go away and am known no more."
-Psalm 38 (39) from Knox's Translation of the Vulgate.
Knox's translation is lucid when compared with the "correct" and dead modern translations of the bible. Try it if King James does not speak to you.
In terms of increasing reading speed, you may want to try the utility "dictator" for those texts which are electronic. For physical books I would run a finger under text to maintain momentum as Adler suggested in "How To Read a Book". Make notes in the text, being sure to use a custom set of symbols to speed notation. Write concise thoughts in the margin, don't go overboard.
Good luck.
For a hacker, it is normal to not subvocalize.
I think it is also one of the reasons that we hate meetings so much. An email can be written at about 40 wpm, and read much, much, much faster. So past 2 or 3 people, the dominant strategy should be text, unless sidechannel meaning is needed (where emotions are involved or whatever).
That's been debunked a while ago. There's no such thing. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subvocalization