Listening To People Editing Wikipedia Is The Most Relaxing Thing You'll Do Today

As busy, on-the-go professionals, we're always on the lookout for convenient new ways to help lower our blood pressure to acceptable levels and, now, with Wikipedia already dominating everyone's mental back pocket as the go-to for answers, it turns out the free encyclopaedia is also an excellent relaxation tool.

Admittedly, it comes via an intermediary — nascent website and app Listen To Wikipedia — which takes data from Wikipedia's recent changes and translates it into some effortlessly listenable, pleasantly restful ambient background music. As CityLab notes, the separate sounds indicate particular occurrences and actions from Wikipedia's editors — bells represent page-content additions, and strings, deletions, while larger string swells breathe in and out and every time a new user signs up.

Take a look below, or visit the standalone site here.

Listen To Wikipedia was built by Stephen LaPorte, who offers legal counsel to the Wikimedia Foundation, and PayPal/eBay developer Mahmoud Hashemi, based on partial inspiration derived from slightly less polished/much less interesting predecessor BitListen (formerly Listen To Bitcoin). As they rather poetically explain in their program notes, "There's something reassuring about knowing that every user makes a noise, every edit has a voice in the roar."

In addition, as the creators explain on the app's About page, "Pitch changes according to the size of the edit; the larger the edit, the deeper the note," and "green circles show edits from unregistered contributors, and purple circles mark edits performed by automated bots", while "white circles are brought to you by Registered Users Like You". The site's graphic interface lets users know to which story the edits were applied, and you can even click through to read the article in question.

As if it's not enjoyable enough in a purely recreational sense, Listen To Wikipedia is beginning to turn heads, too — as CityLab explains, a library at North Carolina State University recently installed an interactive version of the app in order to make use of the program's "informed relaxation" capabilities. 

Read more about the app at the creators' blog.