21 Experts on the Future of Expertise - Future

Matt Clifford: The internet prizes showing, not telling, whether via a GitHub profile, YouTube channel, a Substack newsletter, or even a timestamped tweet that makes a prediction. Don’t tell me you’re an expert, show me.

Andy Coravos: When people ask what you do, they really seem to be asking who you are, putting the attention on people’s credentials within institutions (the nouns) rather than on their actions and contributions (how they live, work, and cultivate knowledge in their fields). Expertise is equated with the former, when it should be more about the latt... See more

Gabby Dizon: This shattering of the “geographic lottery” — where you win the location lottery merely by being born where you are, as opposed to showing your expertise from where you are — is now being helped along by the ongoing construction of crypto infrastructure.

Jacob McHangama: Future generations will marvel at the new perspectives, voices, and knowledge that have come to light in the digital era and simply weren’t possible (or deemed desirable) in the age of analog. Where does all this leave expertise? Expertise remains crucial to knowledge production, but it must reflect genuine excellence in a given fi... See more

Hollis Robbins: Most people focus on the vast reserves of content now available online, but few people ask: “Is this a good teacher?”

Expertise isn’t going anywhere: we’re just finding new ways to measure and signal it.

Sotonye Jack: The ‘institution’ of the internet has arisen at the same time that legacy sense-making institutions have struggled with errors and botched predictions... For the first time in history, the power to pursue truth and make up your own mind is backed by the decentralized sum of all human knowledge, which changes the game of expertise from... See more

Auren Hoffman: It used to be that “who you know” — not “what you know” — held the most value. But in the last 15 years, it has become much more important to build something than to know people.

The generative intellectual environments that academic institutions house and foster are being recreated or entirely rethought online, outside of the brick walls of a university. Internet salons, writer collectives, open-source software, fellowships, and cohort-based courses are providing modern alternatives to those institutions. You don’t need an... See more

Without the academic formality and pressure to uphold institutional reputation, experts now share their knowledge in ways that are decidedly more engaging and even non-academic — say, humorous memes or storytelling devices to explain concepts — across podcast episodes, newsletters, YouTube videos, TikTok clips, and Twitter threads.