In other ways, it's a great time for useless knowledge. One, barriers of entry are lower in a lot of cases (the internet, computers). Two (partly as a corollary

In other ways, it's a great time for useless knowledge. One, barriers of entry are lower in a lot of cases (the internet, computers). Two (partly as a corollary of #1), there are more people empowered to seek useless knowledge (greater education, better communications technology). This affects some fields more than others: computer science research is cheap, but molecular biology research is still dependent on expensive equipment.