Literature and art are very subjective things. I don't think you can really judge them against other periods until you've got a century or so of hindsight. So I

Literature and art are very subjective things. I don't think you can really judge them against other periods until you've got a century or so of hindsight. So I'm afraid that your assertion that they're not like they used to be sounds like it's prejudiced by your belief that people are getting stupider. I bet in a hundred years, there will be classics from our time as much as any other. Science is an interesting one. Perhaps we have already made most of the big leaps in understanding the natural world. But that doesn't imply that scientists now are less intelligent than scientists 'back then'. I'd argue that it takes more knowledge and work to make even seemingly 'minor' discoveries. Besides anything else, we have to understand all that past work before we can build on it.