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Listen To Wikipedia: Engineers Translate Edits Into Sound
Listen
1:49
Listen to the Story
The folks at "The World According to Sound" podcast take listeners to a place where you can hear the sound of the website being edited.
ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:
We all know Wikipedia, the crowd-sourced compendium of online information. Most of the time we read Wikipedia entries, but we're about to hear an audio interpretation of those pages and how they are edited. This comes to us courtesy of our friends at The World According To Sound. It's a podcast by Chris Hoff and Sam Harnett. Take a listen.
(SOUNDBITE OF PODCAST, "THE WORLD ACCORDING TO SOUND")
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: This is the sound of Wikipedia being edited.
Sponsored message
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: It's a project made by Stephen LaPorte and Mahmoud Hashemi. They wrote a program that turns every edit of a Wikipedia entry into a sound. Whenever someone adds information, you hear a bell, and when they delete something, you hear a string plucked.
And the pitch reflects the size of the edits, the lower the note, the larger the edit. There are several edits every second on Wikipedia, thousands every hour. You can hear and see them all in real time at listen.hatnote.com.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
SIEGEL: The World According to Sound is a podcast created by Chris Hoff and Sam Harnett. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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But the game has changed: Congress voted to eliminate funding for public media across the country. Here at LAist that means a loss of $1.7 million in our budget every year. We want to assure you that despite growing threats to free press and free speech, LAist will remain a voice you know and trust. Speaking frankly, the amount of reader support we receive will help determine how strong of a newsroom we are going forward to cover the important news in our community.
We’re asking you to stand up for independent reporting that will not be silenced. With more individuals like you supporting this public service, we can continue to provide essential coverage for Southern Californians that you can’t find anywhere else. Become a monthly member today to help sustain this mission.
Thank you for your generous support and belief in the value of independent news.
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