When I started in engineering, before the internet, before cellphones, before email, before search engines, command was distributed, and knowledge was centralized.
Experts had their file cabinets, their computer programs, and knew where to look for the answers. An expert knew things that no one else could, and when you needed them, you had to figure out who they were and talk to them. This was the purpose of conferences, where you could find the experts and discover the latest state of the art.
Command was distributed because the feedback path through the chain was much less efficient, and there was no machinery to compile the data. When I started, local command had much more authority and had to make all but the most strategic of decisions. You could implement a large feedback system using people, phones and memos, but that was very expensive, and time consuming, and lags were too long for much other than strategic changes in direction. Decisions had to be made by subordinates based on direction, it was too inefficient to do otherwise.
Now, we are completing the transfer into a world where command can be centralized, and knowledge is distributed.
It is now possible to get up to the minute reports on progress, right down to the individual, especially using tools to search and collate the information. Direction can be supplied immediately, right to the worker. Consider the aim of vehicle tracking systems, or how employee time tracking has evolved during this period.
In our day, formal design reviews actually brought to light information that was not available to the reviewers any other way. Nowadays, this data can be published continuously - so a review becomes a day which you go over the information on the website and ask for questions. There is no need for a formal document. Think about that.
And any individual, with the right permissions, can look up any knowledge (or information similar) with an internet connection or access to a library and search engine. Everyone has access to tons of expert knowledge. To be a local expert now means less and less. Especially when you can use the internet and search engines to sift through tonnes of data that experts used to keep in their file cabinets.
And the new engineers are genuinely different from my generation. Look here for my discussion on the biggest difference.