[analog31]

I'm a double bassist, and even as an amateur, my ability to function in ensembles and get hired by bands over the past decades owes a lot fluent sight reading ability.

Musical notation provides a kind of symbiosis between composers / arrangers, and players. If you want to work, you have to read standard notation. If you want your material to get played, you have to write it in standard notation. And learning any notation to the point of sight-reading it is prohibitively difficult for most people, including good musicians who learned without reading.

Experiments with developing new notation tend to involve a cooperation between the composer and willing players, often in an academic setting. It's also a wide open field for electronic and computer aided music, where sight-reading might not be an issue at all.