For years, the growing prevalence of crowd-based production systems (like YouTube or Wikipedia) has forced us to consider the changing role of the expert. Is there still a place for a Shakespeare among the infinite monkeys and infinite typewriters? It seems, at last, society is coming to an answer.

The Infinite Monkey Theorem, an actual thing, suggests that an infinite number of monkeys, typing on an infinite number of typewriters, for an infinite period of time, will eventually reproduce the complete works of William Shakespeare. While mathematically true, the probability is so low (1 in 3.4x10^183,946) that the laws of physics becoming temporarily suspended is slightly more likely.

A few years ago, the theorem was a popular citation among professional journalists seeking to discredit bloggers as unequal to bear the mantle of the Fourth Estate. If infinite monkeys could not reproduce Shakespeare, certainly thousands of bloggers couldn't replace the existing media. As paper after paper stops their presses one last time with the fledgling citizen journalism not yet ready to take their place, the critique is bittersweet. Journalism will survive, but for now we straddle the perilous gap between the old professional paradigm and a new populist one.

Time magazine pays homage to this new world with its nomination of moot [sic] to the Top 100 Most Influential People of 2009 and, at post time, moot is #1 in the online poll (with well over double the votes of #2). If you're not familiar with the name, perhaps you're familiar with Rickrolling, LOLcats, or the Anonymous anti-Scientology campaign, all of which have spawned from his online community 4chan. I'd think twice before visiting that last link, as 4chan is also home to such vast quantities of questionable material that not only are there multiple categories of pornographic manga (Japanese comics) but even the origami forum provokes an 18+ legal disclaimer.

Peeking behind the curtain at 4chan, we're seeing creativity at work. Objectionable ideas bounce around like hail in a raincloud, refined or exaggerated, until they're powerful enough to fall to earth. To some degree, every creative process is like this...

During the writing of Raiders of the Lost Ark, George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, and Lawrence Kasdan taped the brainstorming sessions, which have since been transcribed and dissected. They contain racist remarks (they discuss whether the "third world sleazos" should be Mexicans or Arabs), underage sex (they debate whether Marion should be twelve or fifteen when she fell in love with Indiana), and questionable historical accuracy (they try to guess when airplanes first had flotation devices). In short, it's a rough draft.

The Internet has changed the default state of the brainstorming fail-safe mechanism. That's a overly technical way of saying that, previously, ideas were generated and refined behind closed doors and then made public, now we have front row seats throughout the process. Today's bloggers don't slowly build in-depth exposés, they break stories with the information they have and update when they have more—the same process of constant improvement that takes Wikipedia entries from semi-accurate stubs to full-length articles.

But whither the expert?

We're beginning to see that the expert has two distinct roles to play in this new world. First, that as contributor. The contributors to Wikipedia or to 4chan or to the script of Raiders of the Lost Ark are not monkeys, typing randomly on typewriters, but experts in their field collaborating in a determined fashion. Second, that as aggregater. moot is not 4chan. No more than Jimmy Wales is Wikipedia or Steven Spielberg was Raiders of the Lost Ark. Instead, they have all leveraged their own expertise to create systems—be they technological or social—for the aggregation of others' expertise. Scientists studying special relativity, go contribute to this article. Lighting guys, set up over here. Hilarious idea for a motivational poster, here's an image macro.

The Internet has held a huge mirror up to humanity and is forcing us to confront a reality that has existed for centuries. The world is huge, full of people doing amazing things. We're no more a superstar waiting to be discovered than the next guy. Not that it matters because the institutions that "discover" people, like record labels or movie studios, aren't the metric of quality anymore. The line between the Ivory Tower and the great unwashed masses has been erased. We're no longer experts by standing out, but by chipping in.

The core concept of the Wisdom of Crowds, that aggregated contributions can be substantially greater than even those of exceptional individuals, is completely obvious watching the recent video series by Kutiman, called ThruYOU. Both roles of expert are combined, with hundreds of amateur musicians spliced together by into one grand project. On the one hand, it's no different than Spielberg coordinating George Lucas's imagination, Harrison Ford's acting, and John Williams' score into a great film. On the other hand, it's completely different. It's not upper-class, white guys in California. It's Kurdish vocalists shot with shaky handycams, it's Ohioan rappers captured by camera phones, it's moms with babies, eight-year old violin virtuosos, dorks with recorders, and it's those pesky millennials that I keep hearing will never amount to anything singing their hearts out under the blue illumination from computer monitors.

It's all of us.