"... I think this meta-expertise really is a new thing. A new kind of paradigm of thinking that really had little analog in the past. Even the idea of a Renaiss

"... I think this meta-expertise really is a new thing. A new kind of paradigm of thinking that really had little analog in the past. Even the idea of a Renaissance Man, being an expert in multiple fields simultaneously, isn't quite the same thing." I think it's existed as long as there has been a large hierarchy. I know people inside every corporation I work with that do this job, including myself. At some level, every executive needs someone like this. The new paradigm is how much this person can be expected to possibly know. That's what's changed. Learning has been accelerated so much that you can become fairly adept at most topics in a week or 2.