There is a man holding a megaphone, so he must have been the voice of God

I've heard a lot of grumbling from the academic community over the last few years about how The Internet is taking away professionalism and credibility. Which, in my head, makes for a funny mental image of some white bearded, monacled professor pouting in the corner of his study like a nerd in recess while his scholastic playground gets taken over by the bullying uneducated bloggers of the world, who stand around giving poorly researched speeches. Point being, I guess, is that scholars and doctors who dedicated their lives to being credible on a given subject are a little touchy about the fact that The Internet is making their opinions less necessary. Often, a Harvard professor and a mass group of random normal people discussing their way to a consensus will come up with the same answer to a question, and the only difference between the Harvard man and the mob is that he has a PhD to back up his opinion. Before, he would have been the only source of reference, but now there's no real reason to listen to him specifically, when there're normal people wandering around preaching the same message.

Also, if you don't happen to want to agree with HarvardMan, there are now plenty of other Faux Experts (Fospurts?) on The Internet who I'm sure would be happy to support the viewpoint you do approve of.

While I support the nerds on this one, I also think Academia is a little presumptuous in thinking it's only happening in the world of people with doctorate degrees. The Internet has also allowed for Fospurts to crop up in music, art, auto maintenance, journalism, and probably any other profession. Everyone who knows how to do what they do (as opposed to just having an active interest in it) is "suffering" in the same way.

Most of the problem is that AverageMan actually doesn't recognize a difference between the opinion of HarvardMan and the outcome of the group consensus that matches it. He doesn't recognize that the value of the opinion actually resides completely in the fact that it's HarvardMan saying it, that the years of study he dedicated to the subject gives him a right to speak, and that the group could have saved themselves some time if they shut their mouths long enough to be respectful to those years of knowledge and listen. There's a lot of people running around who either confuse or consciously exchange cultivated knowledge with basic intuition, and basically, they suck.

We can see if this rant changes after I start classes this week and will be forced to follow my own advice, which, frankly, is not the cool way to do things in the 21st Century.