Is there an expert in the house?
Wikipedia has an entire article dedicated to the term expert.
An expert is someone widely recognized as a reliable source of technique or skill whose faculty for judging or deciding rightly, justly, or wisely is accorded authority and status by their peers or the public in a specific well-distinguished domain...I still find it interesting that a field as young as social media can legitimately have those who might be termed "experts" in the field. Notwithstanding, when experts might be crafted through only 10,000 hours of deliberate practice, is it any wonder how many of today's "social media experts" have traversed well beyond the 50,000 tweet mark?
There are broadly two academic approaches to the understanding and study of expertise. The first understands expertise as an emergent property of communities of practice. In this view expertise is socially constructed; tools for thinking and scripts for action are jointly constructed within social groups enabling that group jointly to define and acquire expertise in some domain.
In the second view expertise is a characteristic of individuals and is a consequence of the human capacity for extensive adaptation to physical and social environments. Many accounts of the development of expertise emphasize that it comes about through long periods of deliberate practice. In many domains of expertise estimates of 10 years experience or 10,000 hours deliberate practice are common. Recent research on expertise emphasizes the nurture side of the nature versus nurture argument.
Some factors not fitting the nature-nurture dichotomy are biological but not genetic, such as starting age, handedness, and season of birth.
Or have they?
What do you think makes an expert in today's landscape, and why?
