I offer you a contra thought. We have unparalleled access to information, we have Wikipedia, free online courses, video documentaries, books, you name it. Yet 1/10 people believe the earth is flat, 1/5 does not understand that homeopathy is a fraud, 1/3 believes different races have different levels of intelligence, 1/2 believe in some religion, 3/4 are proud to be born in the given nation and 4/5 never heard of the law of comparative advantages (aka why import taxes hurt economy).
My point is society has already gained all value that can be extracted from free knowledge and information. What we see today is the base level of human dumbness.
> My point is society has already gained all value that can be extracted from free knowledge and information.
This doesn't really follow. Just because the information is available doesn't necessarily mean society will instantly absorb it or trust it.
Right now we're in the early stages of the information boom, where there's a lot of information floating around, but it's difficult to validate that information and determine whether or not it's accurate. Hopefully in the coming decades we as a society will figure out better means of such validation and start to actually address the problems around "fake news" and other sources of misinformation.
My point is society has already gained all value that can be extracted from free knowledge and information. What we see today is the base level of human dumbness.