> Almost the entire population of the world has access to enough knowledge and resources that they can become a leading expert in pretty much any field they wan

> Almost the entire population of the world has access to enough knowledge and resources that they can become a leading expert in pretty much any field they want to. It is estimated that less than half of the world uses the internet: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Internet_usage http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Internet_usage. Having traveled the third world a bit, there are definitely huge swaths of civilization today that have not used the internet, and for whom even electricity is a luxury. Just because you have been greatly affected by the internet doesn't mean everyone has. Reading HN while working in a non-tech field (by HN standards) I constantly notice techies projecting their hyper-connected, Reddit/Facebook/Foursquare-filtered bubble onto others. Not everyone gives a damn about internet startups. Most people don't think "engineer" means "computer programmer." Seventy-five percent of the US uses landline telephones and I bet even more have never heard of Yelp. It's actually a low-tech world out there.