Six shocks to expertise
Each time a layer of expertise got cheap, value moved up a level. The gaps between shocks are getting shorter.
the gaps keep getting shorter…
trying to answer →What happens to expertise when everyone has the same models?Why might human-made things become more valuable?
A short history of expertise getting cheap, told as six moments. For each one: what became cheap, and what became valuable as a result. The pattern is consistent enough to be suspicious of, which is a good reason to write it down.
- 1455Gutenberg’s Bible
- Became cheap
- Copies of text
- Became valuable
- Authors, editors, the printer’s name
- +296 yrs1751The Encyclopédie, volume I
- Became cheap
- Access to codified knowledge
- Became valuable
- Synthesis and criticism
- +88 yrs1839The daguerreotype is announced
- Became cheap
- An accurate likeness
- Became valuable
- Painting that is not about accuracy
- +133 yrs1972The HP-35 pocket calculator
- Became cheap
- Arithmetic
- Became valuable
- Knowing which calculation to do
- +26 yrs1998Google is founded
- Became cheap
- Finding a fact
- Became valuable
- Judging sources; attention
- +24 yrs2022ChatGPT is released
- Became cheap
- First drafts; the median expert
- Became valuable
- Still open
The pattern
In every case the new abundance didn’t eliminate the expert. It moved them up a level, from producing the thing to deciding what to do with it. Scribes became editors. Portrait painters became painters of what photographs couldn’t show. People who did sums became people who knew which sum to do.
The last entry is left open on purpose. The optimistic reading of history says value moves up to judgement again. The pessimistic reading asks how people will learn judgement if the lower rungs of the ladder are gone.