When I read the title I assumed this was going to be a very different piece, as I've recently been discussing with friends and colleagues about how degrees in g

When I read the title I assumed this was going to be a very different piece, as I've recently been discussing with friends and colleagues about how degrees in general are going to be less and less important over time. This is a digression on the topic of the original post, so I'm sorry if I shouldn't be posting it here. The reasoning goes: the reasons why we need degrees are certification and reputation. By certification I mean that we only let people who we all trust practice medicine, as that kills people directly otherwise. So we restrict the people who can to those with the appropriate degrees. The second point is more relevant to most other careers. A degree is nothing but a more reputable institution 'lending' reputation to its graduates. The reason this is necessary is because nobody's got the time to verify whether every person knows Computer Science - we're better off just knowing that people from University of X know CS if UoX says so. Even if you're going to personally interview every candidate for a job opening, still relying on degrees helps you filter candidates. The thing is our interactions are recorded to the level that we can now reason about individuals in a way that was not possible before. Why do I need to trust UoX if I can mine your entire internet presence with reasonably comparable effort? I thought from the title that, since CS is the field that is making this shift possible, we'd be the first one to suffer this influence.