Event Host: Center for Folklore Studies (CFS)
Short Description: Robert Glenn Howard to lecture on "The Fall of the Expert: Everyday Authority in a Network Age."
Robert Glenn Howard to lecture on "The Fall of the Expert: Everyday Authority in a Network Age."
From doctors to ministers and from scientists to instructors of all subjects, experts and expertise have become less and less trusted by our networked society. With instant access to a huge volume of ideas, claims and debates through our mobile devices, why not access “expert” information ourselves? From examples on YouTube about how to play guitar to gun forum debates about which firearms the US military should buy, everyday or “vernacular” authority is empowered by network technologies. But in an age where these corporate owned and controlled technologies sometimes magnify our individual expressions into aggregate voices even louder then that of institutions, who is being empowered over whom?
Robert Glenn Howard is the Chair of Comparative Literature and Folklore Studies, Director of Digital Studies, and Professor of Rhetoric, Politics and Culture in the Department of Communication Arts at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Organized by the Center for Folklore Studies and co-sponsored by The Digital Media and Composition Institute (DMAC), The Department of Comparative Studies and the Center for the Study of Religion.
For more information visit the Center for Folklore Studies.
