Has the information revolution decreased the value of knowledge

In the last 15 years the explosion of the internet has revolutionized the flow of information. Whatever we want to know is now just a mouse click away. While just 20 years ago people had to sit in libraries to find the information they wanted through reading books, we can now pinpoint the information we want within minutes using the net. Everything you want to know is now available on sources like Wikipedia, lectures are put online on YouTube, books, movies and music is available from both legitimate and illegitimate sources. With the knowledge so available is it possible that the value we have put on it and power it holds have decreased with this revolution?

We are now witnessing we have more accessible information then we have ever had the chance to find out before. Whenever we wonder about something we always have a computer in the near surrounding where we can look up what we are wondering about. We sit online for hours where we get news updates continuously 24 hours a day. But in most instances we don’t remember the information we receive. It used to be a time when people used thousands on buying encyclopedias, now the market for this is almost gone with the same information being available on Wikipedia.

Gaining knowledge does not take any effort any more. Reading several books trying to find the information you are searching for has now been reduced to where you can go on google and search for it, or you can use different databases that you can pinpoint the information we need. This has changed the experience we have of gaining the knowledge we seek.

There are of course obvious benefits of the information revolution, the main being that everyone has the possibility of gaining the information they seek. It is no longer bound by physical and monetary boundaries. But still as we come across so much information we don't appreciate it as we used to. Maybe it is time for us to sit down and take in more of the impressions we get from the knowledge we gain, and try to treasure it more then we do now.