There's so much to read and so little time. Unlike past generations who awoke to find a single newspaper on their doorstep, we open our smartphones and computers to find thousands of newspapers, websites, and blogs beckoning our attention. With this deluge of reading material, we're left with a "last foot" problem: how do we get all this information from our screens into our brains? This talk will give a brief history of the written word, describe neurological aspects of the reading process, and explore some of the new innovations that aim to let us read more quickly and efficiently on-screen.