Average adult will spend 34 years with a miracle portal into infinite knowledge and possibility.
The problem seems to be a mix of tons of stuff just not being on the Web yet, even decades in (some of it's in ebooks, though, yes, but a whole lot isn't) and Google having given up on "organizing the world's knowledge" or whatever their supposed mission was (now it's plainly "organize the world's advertising dollars into our bank account") so it may be there but good luck finding it.
I could be wrong but just surrounding the field of software development, there's probably already more relevant information on the internet than I could possibly consume in my life.
(of course it may be better for lots of other things, but for a fairly large set of "finding things on the Web" tasks it's way worse than it used to be, to the point of being nearly useless—in part I think this is because sometime around 2008-2010 they stopped trying to fight webspammers, choosing instead to embrace some set of them provided they play by Google's rules, and downrank anything that wasn't "well-behaved" webspam or well-known sites hard)
1) Google and other search engines revised their algorithms more than a decade ago. Instead of showing you results for what you searched for, they now show you what they _think you meant_ based on your search history and the search histories of millions of other users. This means searching for uncommon topics and phrases get you useless results. And you can't disable this functionality because it's baked into the core of how Google indexes and categories the content that it slurps up from the web.
2) Blogspam authors and e-commerce sites have gotten SEO down to a science, to the point where searching for nearly _anything_ not super specific no longer gets you _information_ about that particular thing, it gets you blogspam articles filled with fluff and affiliate links, or half-broken e-commerce sites trying to sell you something vaguely related to what you searched for. This is not technically Google's fault but there is a lot they could do to curb this, but all that ad revenue on those sites is how they earn that sweet sweet lucre.
That had been going on for years, but there'd be clear times when Google got ahead of it and results would get much better for a while, and because search was so much more precise it was possible to work around the spam. That those good times stopped happening and results are now a consistent and fairly high level of "spam-filled" by content that's seemed pretty much the same sort of crap for years, leads me to conclude they stopped trying. IIRC right around then they stopped the "no no, our ads our different and good, they're just text and always formatted the same way so it's easy to tell what they are" and became just another banner ad slinger.
[EDIT] just mined Slashdot for that last bit, looks like that happened around the last half of '07, which roughly checks out with my recollection of Google search abruptly getting much worse around '08-'09 then never getting better again.
Previously I would have had no way of accessing any of that information unless I happened to be at the right university with the right department, or in some high-level research institute.
Some random examples:
- I'm interested in turbine engines, AgentJayZ has a while host of videos taking real turbine engines apart, talking about obscure features like compressor variable valve vanes etc.
- Plumbing, almost everything I've ever needed to know about plumbing has been available from PlumberParts / dereton33.
- Woodworking, I basically learned everything I know from watching people like Matthias Wandel.
- Recently I've been digging to electronics, I have an excellent book "Practical Electronics for Inventors" but every now and again I need to hear a different take on the same things and invariably there is a good video or article which clears it up for me.
What's more, to get the level of detail these guys show for free in book form would mean investing in some seriously expensive books, most of which hide the interesting parts under a lot of uninteresting maths.
Since it is Google, how awesome would it be if videos also had related web searches attached to them, instead of just related videos. How-tos could have links to the original manual, the most detailed maintenance manuals, or patents and blogs detailing the physics behind how that thing works. Probably not going to happen and would only be for power users, but it could be so powerful.
Between libgen, scihub, Google Books, Project Gutenberg, torrent sites, and the rest of the internet we've got access to almost all of the world's knowledge for free with plenty of avenues to interact with experts using a variety of different channels for knowledge that hasn't been put to paper yet.
> access to almost all of the world's knowledge for free
I'd guess we've got access to ~10% of it (but it's a good 10%!) for free, ~30% paid (but usually piratable!), and the remainder unavailable as a paid electronic resource but maybe (often not) as a paid paper one and maybe (often not) available pirated—maybe you can at least locate or learn of its existence with the Web, but possibly it's totally unknown to the Web outside of maybe a reference in some books that happen to be digitized (this does actually happen, though you do usually have to get a little obscure before it does, but sometimes not as obscure as one might think).
[EDIT] to be clear I think the Web is an excellent research tool, however an awful lot of its value in that role is from piracy (saving me, say, having to inter-library-loan or buy a book just to find the books that book name-drops in its preface, or to read one relevant chapter, or to see the book's index so I can find out whether I need it in the first place). I think its containing anything like "all the world's knowledge", even for liberal values of "all", is far from true, and there's a risk of thinking if something exists it's probably available as a digital resource delivered over the Web (far from true), and if it doesn't then surely it's at least possible to find out about its existence on the Web (also not true), and if neither of those are true it must be something of no value whatsoever to anyone or wildly obscure (not true).
[EDIT EDIT] then even if it is on the web, it can be really hard to find something that's not on one of a few major sites using search. More so than it used to be. It can take so damn long that pirating and reading a book on the topic on Libgen can be faster than finding the same info on the open web, even if it's there, which is pretty damning of the state of web indexing. As I wrote in another comment on this thread, it was once possible to be fairly sure when one had reached the edge of Google's knowledge and the thing you're looking for was not in its index—such certainty is now almost impossible, mostly because of how Google search (and seemingly all other web search tools) has changed, not because of increased total content.
Sources like ArXiv, Google Scholar, and Semantic Scholar have made it really easy for me to access tons of deep, academic/professional level knowledge in my field instantaneously and for free. I know that Physics, Math, and Computer Science are relatively uniquely privileged when it comes to ArXiv, but even paywalled journals are more accessible in the internet age than they were before. I'm even able to find public-released technical info from the DoD through DTIC that I don't think I would ever know what to request without having it come up through search engines.
Likewise, tons of undergrad classes through MIT and the Ivies are available for free on Youtube; more still are available with exercises and some form of certification through services like Coursera, EdX, and Udacity. Some graduate and professional-level courses are starting to come online through these institutions as well; the Institute for Advanced Study has started releasing its lectures on Youtube over the past few years.
I can find manuals for my car, my appliances, and all my electronics online. I have access to all sorts of do-it-yourself how-tos on Youtube when I want to do work around the house. I have StackOverflow for when I have challenges with programming languages and tools that aren't clear from the docs, and the rest of the StackOverflow network when I have questions that are more specific to my problem domain.
There's more throughout all sorts of fields: instant translations with Google translate and langauges lessons through DuoLingo, Rosetta Stone, et al; music lessons on Youtube, etc.
Again, I've been through the experience where some older materials just aren't as available as I'd like, and where the normal search tools only bring you part of the way. But I think you're taking a lot for granted here.
That book will probably be in a screen too, since it's way too hard to carry it around on paper.
Even "correspondence with experts" will be on a screen.
One thing about the show that struck me is that I'm amazed at how inter-personal communication has changed over the decades. I thought I remembered everyone being a lot more easy-going when I was a kid and then decided that I must have imagined it. But no, sure enough, right there on Star Trek you see the characters poking light fun at each other not long after they first met, even in a military setting.
Today people seem to take themselves much more seriously. You have to be a lot more guarded and diplomatic, sometimes even with people you know very well, otherwise you risk alienation or embarrassment. I know TV is not reality, yadda yadda, but there's a kernel of truth in there somewhere.