Good quote from the writer Sebastian Faulks: “The more easily accessible information is, the less people feel the need to know anything. So they’ve lost the ability to think for themselves.”
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Diary of an accidental futurist – observations on current & future trends
That’s only a partial view. When the cost of accessing information drops, new things become possible. Some people get lazy and stop thinking because they don’t have to; others start thinking because they no longer need the huge amounts of ramp-up time to do things that were previously only in the domain of specialists. For a healthy example of this, consider Make Magazine and the Maker Faire.