You Don't Need a Bigger Truck

Dallin H. Oaks, in a talk entitled "Focus and Priorities," uses a story about two men selling watermelons to caution us that having more information available is not always a good thing.  His remarks got me thinking that the wealth of information today has actually made us less educated than before.  I consider education as the process of internalizing information and skills in such a way that they can easily be recalled and used in the future.  With that definition in mind it seems obvious to me that many people are less educated than before the so-called "age of information."  Rarely does anyone really internalize information anymore preferring instead to look it up once, use it, forget it, and then repeat the cycle again when needed.  In my opinion, that is not becoming more educated and yet so many people convince themselves that they are smarter because of it.