Well, there's a flip side to all that, you know. Sure, it's easier to get information these days, but
- You still have to read it and study it, and that's the real work. Maybe someday you'll be able to hook a USB cable to your ear and transfer the results from a Google search directly into your brain, but I don't see that happening any time soon.
- Along with the huge amount of information that's available now comes the unsettling fact that anybody can publish anything on the Internet. So yesterday's challenge of getting information is replaced by the current one of deciding which of it is reliable. Please don't expect me to believe something just because you saw it in Wikipedia!
- When talking about computers, anyway, there's way more to learn than there used to be. My Apple //e arrived sometime in the early '80s with two little books that couldn't have been more than 150 pages each. One explained the hardware in gory detail, including complete schematics and everything. The other explained the software in gory detail, including a complete listing of the BIOS, which was all there was in the way of an operating system. That was it! Read those two books and you knew everything there was to know about your wonderful new toy. Today, do you think there's any one person, in Redmond or not, who comes anywhere close to completely understanding Windows? I doubt it.
-- Russ
