After receiving many kind comments on our paper, “Professions and Expertise: How Machine Learning and Blockchain Are Redesigning the Landscape of Professional Knowledge and Organisation”, I have substantially revised it and put the new version on SSRN. I want to thank in particular Professor Laurel Terry of the Dickinson Law School at Penn State University. I hadn’t realised how many convoluted sentences I’d written until she pointed them out and she came through with many new sources for me.
The paper is extended and deepened. The deepening came about through my reading of Harry Collins’ work on the sociology of science. He explained how acquiring expertise and knowledge is as much social as it is intellectual. The role of tacit knowledge is deeply embedded in social systems. And it is tacit knowledge that takes us from the idiot savant to the fully fledged member of a knowledge group.
I have also included two 3D figures that illustrate knowledge acquisition which are derived from Collins’ research at All @ SEE: The Expertise Network. It’s well worth fossicking around in.
Finally, I have extended the discussion of the contribution of blockchain in law and legal organisation. I have tried to imagine a law firm as a distributed autonomous organisation.
