The death of expertise
Futureworld 27 May 2027
Adecade ago, expertise was in high demand, and becoming an expert in a particular field — particularly high-tech domains — took a lot of research and hard work. Learning by experience was considered essential.
But as we relied more and more on technology, and the amount of information online literally exploded, it was easy to acquire expertise simply by asking Google or watching YouTube videos on a subject. Almost everything you wanted to know about anything was available “on the internet” and the skill was knowing how to look for it.
Need to cook a special curry or change the suspension on a BMW? A dozen videos would guide you step-by-step, for free. Granted, there was a lot of fake news and nonsense on social platforms, but therein lay another skill — knowing how to find trusted sources and sift the wheat from the chaff.
True experts resented the “dumbing down” of humanity by tech companies. No-one could read a map or remember a phone number, or even spell. Why bother to learn how, when Apple and Google and Microsoft could do it for you? We outsourced our data, knowledge and expertise to the cloud, and if we needed anything, there was an app for that. Just didn’t need to lose your device, or access!
Then came a pivotal moment, when ChatGPT took the world by storm. Instead of laboriously searching the web, just ask ChatGPT to collate and summarise the information for you — and then write the email or paper too. Instant expertise was ours for the asking. And who were we to question the Oracle? If the AI knows more than you do, you learn to trust it.
But with access to real-time data — including the social platforms — and the ability to post on our behalf, soon the vast majority of “expert information and opinion” on the internet was a cleverly reworded, paraphrased, unpacked or expanded version of what was already there in the first place. GPT and its ilk became the pre-eminent provider of content: text, images, video, and code. None of it truly original.
And where have all the experts gone? /First published on Mindbullets 25 May 2023
APPLEISATION MAKES US DUMB 9 September 2018
The Appleisation of society has reached an all-time high. As consumers and users of technology, we want instant gratification, intuitive interfaces and gadgets that “get” us — as individuals. Which means that we’ve lost the ability to think and act for ourselves.
When the chips are down, the power’s out and there’s no network or signal, how will we cope? Just as city dwellers have lost the skills to survive in the wild, we are losing the capacity to live and work without our smart devices and services. We’ve become hostages to Apple or Google or Samsung.
Think about it for a moment. Are you lost without your smartphone? Can you call a cab without Uber? How do you find a restaurant and how do you pay when your devices aren’t around? You carry cash? How bizarre!
It all started with GPS and satnav. Once we had a reliable service to tell us where to go, we stopped paying attention to the route. Anyway, Waze always knew the quickest way, despite the traffic. Then we couldn’t remember phone numbers, because that was the phone’s job! Even back-ups were automated, so we didn’t have to remember that either.
But now it’s worse, and Apple is the biggest culprit. Apple’s car software, smart home operating system and media ecosystem have made us slaves to convenience and simplicity. If we don’t have them at our fingertips, we’re lost, we don’t know what to do, how to get by or entertain ourselves. Which makes us kinda dumb, don’t you think? /First published on Mindbullets 3 September 2015