As someone who used to earn a living as an audio touch typist (and an extremely good one at that!), I can vouch that it is perfectly possible to type whole letters and reports without remembering a single detail - in through the ears, out through the fingers, without passing brain cells.
Anyway, I am very interested in all this and am gathering resources on memory techniques and speed reading with some quite specific targets: so I can process the 28000 PDF documents on my computer, and learn Arabic much more quickly and thoroughly.
I googled the Tim Ferris as suggested above and here is the link:
Scientific Speed Reading: How to Read 300% Faster in 20 Minutes
One of the comments to that refers to a document on reading on the Michigan University website - well it's not there now, but I have found it on mediafire. I've just read it and it's quite a useful summary in things to consider when reading and how to approach non-fiction works.
It is a legitimate download and here is the bit off the front page that says so:
"This article may be freely distributed for any non-‐commercial purpose, provided that nothing is added or removed, including this copyright notice."
howtoread.pdf