Welcome to Perenggan! I’m writing this post to convey the values and ideas behind my inspiration to start this site.
Like us, information evolves through time. We humans stem from a single source of origin, and throughout time, we spread all over the earth through our desire to explore, eventually settling in continents where we develop a wide spectrum of skin colour, languages, cultural behaviour, even sense of humour.
The same can be said for information. A single source of truth, over time, may (and most of the time, will be) interpreted differently by different source. These sources can be said to represent some community, or to employ some ethical stance, or to pursue some objectives that sets the foundation of their existence.
Sometimes varying interpretations are acceptable as the right to have points of view; most of the time it’s not. Most of the time informations are deliberately misguided, partially concealed, or strongly biased to protect the interest of some to the detriment of many.
One can blame the ‘experts’ for not sharing their discoveries, insights or ideas in detail to the general people. One can blame institutional-funded mainstream media that are ‘ordered’ to obscure and twist information to the favour of the one at the top. One can even blame the public for not being critical enough in digesting information.
But be it as it may, the situation is clear: general people, in Malaysia especially, are in need of quality, insightful piece of information, and the information provider-the one with capacity to do so-are, at massive scale, doing the exact opposite to serve them. And I think that status quo is troublesome.
In that regard, I’m inspired by the quote by WIRED, attached at the bottom every time they’re trying to sell me their subscription service at a discount:
“When information is cheap, context is more valuable than ever.”
Context speaks volumes in the age of flooding information. It carries the most weight and sparks the most argument. If information can be visualized as a branch on tree among other thousands, then the one with context will be the most fruitful of all.
Which is why I started Perenggan. It is an independent, not-for-profit publication efforts by a small team of passionate editor, illustrator and storytellers, to bring value in content. We aim to put context in information, and we aim to spread it as widely as we can. We do this by referring to various sources throughout our writing process, and disseminating insights into digestible pieces. At times, we translate articles to Malay to make it as accessible as possible. Some of our articles will be short and essential- even shorter than this writing. Some may be long, and that reflects our deep and unbiased research into the subjects we’re writing.
Over time, we will introduce primers, news, and opinions covering various topics from science, to finance, tech and culture. We’ll cover the breadth of the world’s affair in timeless articles, written to inspire and entertain and inform you, even until 5 years in the future.
Well, that may sound a little bit ambitious, but at least by getting clear on what we’re aspiring to do, we’re hoping that we could achieve that goal, even slowly.
In launching Perenggan, we hope to democratise information so everyone can get the essence of information that previously may be available to some.
So read on. And if you’re keen to join the movement, do contribute/nominate articles that you find worthy to be here. We’re reachable at editorial@perenggan.my.