The Death of Expertise

Nichols, Tom. The Death of Expertise: The Campaign Against Established Knowledge and Why it Matters. NYC: Oxford University Press (USA), 2017.[1] Also available as an MP3 CD "iPod Ready" (although getting it copied onto an iPhone or to play on a Toyota CD player was beyond the competence of the Initial Compiler; it did play on his iMac).

--. Our Own Worst Enemy: The Assault from within on Modern Democracy. NYC: Oxford, University Press (USA), 2021. Available as an Audible Audiobook, unabridged and read by the author: "HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books (Publisher)."

In the two books, (sufficiently) relevant here for the examination by a "technological optimist" of the dark side of the Internet, social media, and electronic connectedness (including Worst Enemy, chapter 5, chapter 9 in Audiobook format: "Hello, I Hate You; How Hyperconnection Is Destroying Democracy"). The democracy here is liberal democracy, as opposed to illiberal populism.

Key for users of this wiki: Our communications technology has made it more difficult to get real knowledge and to get us information about one another that gets us to dislike people who, in former times, we wouldn't learn or think about much.

Useful books whose author can sketch (in Worst Enemy) an analogy between people hooked on social media and other forms of "constant contact" on the one hand, and on the other the boy in Lost in Space (1965-68),[2] frequently jolted alert by over-attentive Robot (name of robot character) with "Danger, Will Robinson!" (which I remember as "Danger, Will Robinson! Danger!", perhaps conflating the Will Robinson phrase with Robot's (or The Robot's) more common, "Danger! Danger!").[3]

RDE, finishing, 10Jul22