

The Death of Expertise
The Campaign Against Established Knowledge and Why it Matters
Author: Tom Nichols
Narrator: Sean Pratt
Unabridged: 8 hr 40 min
Format: Digital Audiobook Download
Publisher: Tantor Media
Published: 05/23/2017
Categories: Nonfiction, Computers, Social Science, Sociology, Education, Philosophy
Synopsis
Tom Nichols shows 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 notes 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.