Science & Tech Quote by Walter Isaacson

In Isaacson's line, the flattering myth of the internet age gets punctured with a single, almost weary concession: yes, everyone can sound smart now, but sounding smart is not the same as knowing. The phrase "everybody's a pundit" isn't admiration, it's a diagnosis of a media ecosystem where commentary has become cheap, abundant, and often untethered from firsthand reporting. The subtext is blunt: democratized opinion is not a substitute for professional verification.

What makes the quote work is how quickly it shifts from the abstract to the concrete. "Go talk to the colonels" and "be on the ground in Baghdad" invokes the post-9/11 realities of war coverage and the kind of access, risk, and logistics that don't fit into a blog post or a hot take. Isaacson is pointing at the last mile of truth: the unglamorous human labor of cultivating sources, getting past gates, checking claims in real time, and absorbing the cost - literal and personal - of being present where decisions are made and bodies are at stake.

"And stuff" is doing cultural work, too. It's casual, even slightly dismissive, underscoring how easily audiences and online debaters can wave at complex realities without paying the bill for understanding them. The punchline is economic: "that's very expensive". In an attention economy trained to expect free content, Isaacson is making the unfashionable argument that reliable knowledge is a costly infrastructure. The internet can manufacture pundits at scale; it cannot, by itself, fund correspondents, security details, or the institutional patience required to get the story right.