The Death of Expertise: The Campaign Against Established Knowledge and Why It Matters

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_of_Expertise

“The Death of Expertise” by Tom Nichols is a timely piece to the ongoing information endemic, especially in America. Quoting Issac Asimov:

There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that “my ignorance is just a good as your knowledge.”

The book describes the author’s view of why experts are so important in a democracy and the relationship between expertise the public. And it also goes on to decry the ongoing decay in this relationship, where citizens are increasingly losing trust in experts, and experts are increasingly finding it difficult to communicate with their audience.

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I’ve just finished the major part (without the postscript essays) of the famous and oft-discussed book, once a best seller - the Black Swan. The author was knowledgable, and the book was insightful and well-crafted, with his unique style of discussing serious topics with occasional anecdotes and vivid storytelling. It was a fantastic ride.

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• https://play.google.com/store/books/details?pcampaignid=books_read_action&id=cTyfxP-g2IIC
• https://www.amazon.com/What-Dormouse-Said-Counterculture-Personal/dp/0143036769

When logic and proportion

Have fallen sloppy dead

And the White Knight is talking backwards

And the Red Queen’s off with her head

Remember what the dormouse said

Feed your head

Feed your head

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https://play.google.com/store/books/details/Bruce_Schneier_Data_and_Goliath_The_Hidden_Battles?id=MwF-BAAAQBAJ https://www.amazon.com/dp/039335217X/

“Data and Goliath” is an excellent book a friend recommended. It’s a summary of all the dangerous and negative ways data, and the “Big Data” technology can shape our societies. The author Bruce Schneier is a prominent expert in cryptography who published impactful works on cryptography and issues on privacy. He’s also on the board of directors of Electronic Frontier Foundation.

• https://www.schneier.com/blog/about/
• https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Schneier
• Renowned Security Expert Bruce Schneier Joins EFF Board of Directors

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The book “Weaving The Web”, from the creator of the World Wide Web himself, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, was first published in around 1999. But it was quite pleasant to read, and I think was surprisingly relevant to what’s going on with the Internet and the web now, in 2019, 20 years later.

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Just finished Clay Shirky’s Here Comes Everybody, which I think it’s a very interesting book. The author shared his insights on how the Internet effectively gathers the power of people, and how it is rapidly reshaping the society today. Book starts with a story on how Internet helps a lady to regain her lost cellphone with the assistance and pressure from people online, and expands discussion to what why it could happen, and what we should do about it. The world is smaller and people are closer than ever before, for better or worse, because of technologies. In this book, the author carefully analyzed ways Internet could affect our lives, what it means to the world.

I listed several observations the authors provided in this book, which I find very interesting.

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