I think the (undersold) advantage of the Internet is how easy it is to get at least a basic education outside of one’s discipline. I can find loads of classical literature online, read blogs by people who work in other fields and quickly learn historical facts from wikipedia. I do think that the information age changes the way we think — and rightly so. For example, in my own field, medicine, even 20 years ago the emphasis was on fact memorization. Now, facts are always literally at our fingertips, so the emphasis has changed on how to analyze facts and synthesize new understanding. It makes for a much richer academic discipline.