I think we retain knowledge when we put it to use it regularly. With Google, Wikipedia, YouTube, etc. you can quickly access information, but the retention part

I think we retain knowledge when we put it to use it regularly. With Google, Wikipedia, YouTube, etc. you can quickly access information, but the retention part is still all on us. Pre-Internet when I had a question, I'm wondering if the fact that we have accessed more information through Google but our total capacity for retention has stayed the same makes us feel like we're dumber. If we can retain 200 things a year, before we'd retain 10% of all information accessed because we weren't bombarded with as much, but now we retain about 1% or less because we're getting hot with so much info whenever we want. But the quantity of retained information is still constant (or maybe increasing), it just feels like more information is skipping through the cracks because of the volume.