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The Vision Edition
Peter Gale
October 15, 2024
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This week, Boundless Discovery turns the lens inward to share the philosophy driving our mission and our vision for a new era of journalism. With growing curiosity from our readers, it’s time to explain why we believe that a new approach to news is not only desirable but essential—and what we’re doing to make it a reality.
We mapped the minds of 2 passionate builders across 6 spirited conversations to deliver the complete picture, ensuring clarity amidst the complexity.
OUR PHILOSOPHY: FACILITATING THE CREATION OF NEW KNOWLEDGE
Human beings utilize knowledge to solve problems, and we are unique in our ability to create new knowledge. We create new knowledge by constructing explanations around our observations, and testing those explanations against reality. The application of knowledge to solving problems is the foundation of our growth and prosperity as a species. We must maintain the ability to create new knowledge because we will inevitably continue to face new and increasingly complex problems.
THE PROBLEM: WHY NEWS NEEDS A RADICAL RETHINK
The news is an important way that many people make observations of the world; therefore we feel that it is a crucial aspect of knowledge creation.
News media is in a competition for people’s attention, and that competition has never been more fierce. To keep up, news organizations are incentivized to follow the rules of attention economics: use sensationalist headlines, stoke fear and anger, and affirm readers' existing biases while sidelining opposing perspectives. These incentives do not support quality observations of the world and therefore do not support the creation of good explanations.
Innovation in news has so far focused on capturing our attention and emotions rather than transforming how the news itself is presented. We believe it's time for a shift. The way news is delivered, connected, and understood needs radical improvement. If we can achieve this, we can out-compete clickbait.
OUR SOLUTION:
Today, Boundless Discovery is a newsletter focused on complex global issues that leverages technology to organize volumes of information that would be impractical to consume directly. But our vision goes far beyond that.
We're building an information platform designed for you to actively investigate world events—not just consume pre-packaged explanations. Our approach will allow you to explore and test your own explanations of what's happening against the observations we collect – ask questions, dive deeper into context, and uncover how events, people, and places are interconnected.
While emotionally charged stories that confirm beliefs that you already hold can be enticing, they do not necessarily lead to accurate explanations that you can use to successfully navigate the world. By providing a foundation of information and the means to explore it, we think we can facilitate the knowledge creation that is needed to address the world's most pressing problems.
To all our subscribers, thank you for being part of this journey. Wishing you a very happy Canadian Thanksgiving from the Boundless Discovery team.
If our vision for the future of news resonates with you, we’d be grateful if you shared this newsletter with anyone who might find it valuable.
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