The Death of the Professional: Are Doctors, Lawyers and Accountants Becoming Obsolete? | Alternet
▻http://www.alternet.org/books/death-professional-are-doctors-lawyers-and-accountants-becoming-obsolete
More than this, human experts in the professions are no longer the only source of practical expertise. There are illustrations of practical expertise being made available by recipientsof professional work—in effect, sidestepping the gatekeepers. On various platforms, typically online, people share their past experience and help others to resolve similar problems. These “communities of experience,” as we call them, are springing up across many professions (for example, PatientsLikeMe and the WebMD communities in medicine). We say more about them in a moment. More radical still are systems and machines that themselves generate practical expertise. These are underpinned by a variety of advanced techniques, such as Big Data and artificial intelligence. These platforms and systems tend not to be owned and run by the traditional professions. Whether those who do so will in turn become “new gatekeepers” is a subject of some concern.