The rise of the expert

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I’m sitting in my doctor’s office. I’ve described my symptoms and he’s asked a few questions. For a few seconds, he seems puzzled. He starts typing at his computer. I shift my chair so I can see what he’s typing into which expert medical database.

He’s on Google.

This episode from a couple of weeks back illustrates the ever increasing importance of experts. As information swells in quantity but shrinks in quality, people who can sift through the muck to find the gold become more important and more powerful. People who can judge and interpret; who tell us, the public, what is worth paying attention to and what we can ignore; experts and gatekeepers; journalists, editors, doctors, lawyers and scientists: they are all more important now than ten years ago. And they’ll be more important in ten years than now.

I wonder what the implications of that are.

P.S. I lied about the lawyers.

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Comments

[Ross Patterson]

Hmm ... I'd MUCH rather see my doc searching MedLine than Google. Kinda "Doogie Howser, MD" if you ask me.