Cover image for
Title:
The death of expertise : the campaign against established knowledge and why it matters / Tom Nichols.
Author:
Nichols, Thomas M., 1960- author.
Genre:
Publication Information:
New York, NY : Oxford University Press, 2019.
Call Number:
HM851 .N54 2019
Abstract:
"Technology and increasing levels of education have exposed people to more information than ever before. 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. The Death of Expertise shows how this rejection of experts has occurred: 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, greater dissemination of information, rather than producing an educated public, has instead created an army of ill-informed and angry citizens who denounce intellectual achievement. Now updated with a new forward that explains how all these related issues came to a head in the wake of Donald Trump's election."--Back cover.
ISBN:
9780190865979
Physical Description:
xxv, 252 pages ; 21 cm
Contents:
Preface to the paperback edition -- Preface -- Introduction: the death of expertise -- Experts and citizens -- How conversation became exhausting -- Higher education: the customer is always right -- Let me Google that for you: how unlimited information is making us dumber -- The "new" new journalism, and lots of it -- When the experts are wrong -- Conclusion: experts and democracy.
Copies: