3 Feb 2014

Collective knowledge

7:55 am on 3 February 2014
Knowledge illustration

Photo: Holly Worthington

What you see on The Wireless is the result of the combined knowledge and hard work of dozens of people.

Each person has their own unique perspective on what this is, or could be. We're constantly developing and refining what we do; asking what we should be doing and what we can do better.

For me, the most fulfilling part of working on The Wireless is seeing everyone's contributions come together to create something that's more than the sum of its parts.

A dozen or more sources may be spoken to in the development of a story and there's the views of other members of The Wireless team that shape how the final piece is told. A designer, photographer or videographer will also put their own touch on how the story is illustrated. Then it will all be edited and a headline written before we hit the button to publish the final result.

We distil down our collective knowledge to tell a story, then share it with you.

This month our theme is “knowledge”. We’ll be looking at types of learning, institutions of knowledge, delving into how science works and talking to experts in their field about what they think everyone should know.

Of course, there’s a bazillion other scraps of information competing for your attention out there on the internet.

Maybe you wish you could be free of most of the information that comes your way. You might feel, as our contributor Sebastian Boyle does, that there too many competing pieces of knowledge rattling around in your brain.

With some much information available to us at all times, we’ve all become editors and curators, able to choose to a large degree what turns up in our information feeds, whether its using RSS, Facebook or Twitter. This is going to evolve to an even higher degree as media find more ways to personalise the information you’re supplied.

In doing so, we risk being trapped in an information loop, where the same ideas continue to cycle around, reinforcing what we already think, closing down the likelihood that we’ll come across points of view that might change our perspective.

At The Wireless, we welcome different points of view. We think it’s vital for an informed, fair and democratic society. If there’s a voice you think needs to be heard, tell us about it. You have a part in shaping what we do.

Hopefully, the knowledge we share will help you make better choices about your life, or at the very least, give you something that’s worth thinking about.