For most of us mere mortals, there's a time and a place for the ability to skim, summarize and extract.
Having even just a bit of foreknowledge on a short topic can sometimes let us get away with "speed reading." For many years, I was subject to annual language proficiency tests, which included a fairly lengthy reading section. In this sort of instance, glancing over the multiple choice questions and answers before diving into a wall of alien hieroglyphics gives us a clue as to what we're searching for, so we're not getting bogged down in paragraphs that are often largely irrelevant. Also, being armed with an understanding of the culture can often help us eliminate one or two options from A, B, C and D right off the bat (if it reflected positively on Israel, it was probably not the correct answer).
If you'll pardon a bit of my darkness, like it or not, I feel that our modern day and age is pushing us to speed read (how effectively we do is another matter), and I don't believe it's doing us any favors. Given the sheer volume of online media competing for our attention, even a curmudgeonly 20th century fox like myself all too often now finds the ole attention span starting to meander while perusing articles, or even, to my dismay, an actual book without any glowing rectangles to stare at. It can at times be a struggle to force myself to focus, even when there is a genuine desire or an absolute need to fully understand a broad, nebulous subject in which I lack any prior background.
While I do envy the folks who claim to have read a mind-boggling number of books in an equally amazing short span of time (yet still seem to have a life...), I'm privately more than a little skeptical how much they truly distilled.
TL;DR (I died a little inside when I learned what that meant...): If something is worth reading, I strongly feel that it's worth taking our time and even enjoying the process.