On the other hand, 99% of my looking stuff up online is very low-value, and the trade off for that ease is that any time some question of trivia comes to mind I sort of itch until I find it out, even if it doesn't matter, whereas before most such questions would hardly have entered my conscious mind to begin with.
I'm saying people are building sputterers, waterjets and even fabing transistors and ICs(Sam Zeloof) in their garages. It goes way beyond factoids. You can connect with experts in just about any field.
True! I just focused on factoids because that's what I feel most keenly. Even though the availability of educational resources has arguably made a bigger difference in my own life, the thing that tickles my fancy is still that I can get answers to silly questions like "what is that damn lyric?" that were completely mysterious before.