h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Sitting in front of my computer for the past couple of hours, a thought hit me... As we enter the 21st century, we are forced to digest an ever-increasing amount of information (to borrow a line from Dilbert, like a fire hose aimed at a tea cup). Our households' most-worshipped machines are our TVs and our computers, our gateways to our civilization's network of information. The thing is, humans' capacities to learn are remaining the same. In the Stone Age, everybody knew everything. Our ancestor Og maybe knew three things: make fire, catch dinner, protect cave. Living in the dawn of the third millenium, everybody has a specific job, and that's what they know. As a direct result of this specializing of information, everybody's getting dumber. George W. Bush isn't stupid, he's a forward thinker! As we get farther and farther into the future, people will know so little of the knowledge base of our species, their information will stop overlapping, and holes will start to appear. Parts of our collective knowledge will disappear forever. This is already happening -- look at Latin. Eventually, we'll forget how to do something crucial to our survival, not just how to speak ancient languages. In other words, to use the cliche, we will "know too much for our own good." So, save the world; forget quantum physics.