Unidentified Artist::
Nuestra Señora de Belén con un retrato de donante indígena
Our Lady of Bethlehem with Portrait of an Indigenous Donor
(18th century)
Nuestra Señora de Belén, a patron saint of the city of Cuzco, Peru.
Convent of Santa Clara.

"We should be justly proud of our accomplishments…"

Social Media has introduced the greatest volume of instant experts in the history of this universe. Before, expertise came through patient practice, sometimes through apprenticeships. It might take decades before a novice could be properly considered to be an expert, even in their own mind. Now, a simple search can place the apparent wisdom of the ages in the palm of one’s hand. This does not even require a lengthy attention span. One might be wise to question such easily acquired skills, but such commodities have come into common commerce now. Any conversation, especially one with even the sparest hint of controversy, will attract at least one offering their well-intended InstantaneousExpertise.

The internet exists as a most convincing collection of seemingly everything. Seemingly. With this as the research base, it seems possible to instantly access whatever information might be necessary to find. But finding it within that massive morass proves challenging. The first barrier lies in distinguishing between research and the relatively simple searches social media encourages, and its users seem to thrive on. Searches tend to produce self-sealing responses. They at best produce what they request, with ignorance, prejudice, and even blind preference invisibly embedded. Research requires some curation, for it accesses previously acquired information, organized in some fashion. Without the key to that organization, a naive search will very likely fail to find the significant context essential for proper interpretation. The satisfied naive accessor will be apt to go off much less than half-cocked, firmly believing they carry a revelation, as if they’ve discovered something other than reinforcement of originating conception, without really learning anything. Factoid in hand, they pounce and face-plant!

Social media often seems populated by such freshly-saved souls, ones more confident of their salvation than they ever should feel about their recent insights, which might blind them to reasonable conversation. They play their hands as if every card they play really should be the one sure to trump whatever anyone else might have played. The real experts quietly excuse themselves from the table while those whose wealth consists solely of InstantaneousExpertise convince themselves they’ve won the argument. This tedious game gets repeated so frequently and repeatedly on social media that actual experts only very rarely bother to open a thread or comment on others’. Often, the raw data seems fine, but lacks context. Someone will post that a data center annually wastes a million gallons of precious water cooling, without understanding that a center-pivot irrigation rig has been routinely using multiples of that amount to irrigate much less valuable crops over much shorter times.

The apparent goal of InstanteneousExpertise seems to be to elicit some form of outrage. Raw numbers often appear where only relative comparisons could ever prove useful. The future’s often amplified or ignored, its shadow either over-emphasized or severely under-played. InstantaneousExpertise is not congruent with systems thinking. It’s far too episodic and melodramatic to find much use beyond the most superficial competition. Prompting artificial intelligence seems little different than naive searching in practice. Prompting has been fast becoming the essential skill of our artificially-intelligent future, for the responses it elicits make all the difference between intelligence and the borderline stupid response. But few will ever care to gain the expertise required to goad the technology into producing a genuinely intelligent response. They will blame the AI engine rather than the operator’s InstantaneousExpertise.

If it proves anything, social media seems destined to prove that expertise cannot be acquired instantaneously. It still demands lengthy apprenticeships and more judgment than one can conveniently shake any odd stick at or acquire a priori. Broadband no more imparts wisdom than owning a set of Encyclopedia Britannica ever did. Access does not guarantee results, however much anyone might desire it to. Properly used, it seems to me that social media should induce a deep sense of humility at the vastness of the unknown, a more reinforced connection to unknowability than the false certainty it more often seems to induce. We should be justly proud of our accomplishments, but understand that we’re still barely scratching the thin surface of any expertise however otherwise we might too easily convince ourselves.

©2026 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #Unscrolling, #PureSchmaltz