The Death of Expertise
The Campaign Against Established Knowledge and Why it
Matters
Tom Nichols
People are now exposed to more information than ever
before, provided both by technology and by increasing access to every level of
education. These societal gains, however, have also helped fuel a surge in
narcissistic and misguided intellectual egalitarianism that has crippled
informed debates on any number of issues. Today, everyone knows everything:
with only a quick trip through WebMD or Wikipedia, average citizens believe themselves
to be on an equal intellectual footing with doctors and diplomats. All voices,
even the most ridiculous, demand to be taken with equal seriousness, and any
claim to the contrary is dismissed as undemocratic elitism.
As Tom Nichols shows in The Death of Expertise, this
rejection of experts has occurred for many reasons, including the openness of
the internet, the emergence of a customer satisfaction model in higher
education, and the transformation of the news industry into a 24-hour
entertainment machine. Paradoxically, the increasingly democratic dissemination
of information, rather than producing an educated public, has instead created
an army of ill-informed and angry citizens who denounce intellectual
achievement.
Nichols has deeper concerns than the current rejection
of expertise and learning, noting that when ordinary citizens believe that no
one knows more than anyone else, democratic institutions themselves are in
danger of falling either to populism or to technocracy-or in the worst case, a
combination of both. The Death of Expertise is not only an exploration of a
dangerous phenomenon but also a warning about the stability and survival of
modern democracy in the Information Age.
