Steinberger, Mike. "We're all wine critics now: How the Internet has democratized drinking." Slate. 15 Sept. 2009. Slate Magazine. 27 Sept. 2009. http://www.slate.com/id/2229518/pagenum/all/#p2

This article discusses how the profession of expert wine taster is disappearing because sharing your opinion is becoming easier with the internet. Now, people aren't really trusting just one critic. They are exploring different websites and archives to discuss and rate different wines. One of these archives is "CellarTracker," which is a website with "a database of more than 1 million tasting notes." Although, "CellarTracker hasn't usurped professional wine critics," it is starting to make sharing your opinion easier. It is also "forcing them[wine critics] to justify their existences to an unprecedented degree," and this seems logical. If you can read many reviews for a wine, from many different people, why should one "expert's" opinion count over these views. "We are moving from a monologue to a dialogue." More and more people are contributing, and every person that contributes debunks official wine critics more and more. A good example of this is wine expert, Jay Miller, who gave a "Sierra Carche" a 96 score, when in all reality it was "terrible." "A decade ago . . . they [consumers] would have given his [Miller's] palate the benefit of the doubt. Now, though, consumers are far more confident in their own tastes and are no longer quite so deferential."

I don't care about wine. I won't ever care about wine. But I think this article represents the switch from "a monologue to a dialogue." This is occurring more and more in different areas of life. People are sharing their opinion on different subjects and expertise doesn't matter, in some areas. I think that this switch is good for society in some facets, but bad in other facets. I think that in areas like wine tasting it is good because "t is a matter of taste, and taste differs from one person to the next." But in some areas, such as in politics or science, I don't think that the masses should overrule the experts. This is because in some areas experts have specialized knowledge not available to regular people and really do know what they are talking about. They are educated in the subject matter. With anyone being able to share their feelings, someone who isn't educated in the subject matter can bring a lot of people to their side, if they have a convincing voice.