Death of expertise or death of specialization?  The assumption now is that anyone can understand anything instantly.   My favorite article related to that is this one:  http://roy.gbiv.com/untangled/2008/specialization Global Peace and Conflict studies is no exception, but as he says, we live in a high school locker room full of markers. 

Holy Smokes that link is to Roy Fielding's blog!

As in coauthor of the HTTP spec.

Everything really is interconnected.

In lamenting the death of specialization he notes people complain they can't understand his thesis:

Apparently, I use words with too many syllables when comparing design trade-offs for network-based applications. I use too many general concepts, like hypertext, to describe REST instead of sticking to a concrete example, like HTML. I am supposed to tell them what they need to do, not how to think of the problem space. A few people even complained that my dissertation is too hard to read. Imagine that!

Now that I think about it there's no good explanation of REST for a general audience, is there?

I like that in the article JP linked, the expert concludes...

Expertise isn’t going away, but unless we return it to a healthy role in public policy, we’re going to have stupider and less productive arguments every day. So here’s a good set of rules of thumb when arguing with an expert:

1.The expert isn’t always right.

2. But an expert is far more likely to be right than you are.

3. Your political opinions have value in terms of what you want to see happen, how you view justice and right. Your political analysis as a layman has far less value, and probably isn’t — indeed, almost certainly isn’t — as good as you think it is.

4. On a question of factual interpretation or evaluation, the expert’s view is likely to be better-informed than yours. At that point, you’re best served by listening, not carping and arguing.

I agree with him that much time is wasted on political opinions. :)