>It has made everyone, if not smarter then, better informed

I don't agree with this. While it's made it possible to be better informed, it isn't the case that everyone is, and in addition it's meshed with the bugs in our code (confirmation bias springs to mind) to allow disinformation to spread, and people to seek sources that confirm their beliefs rather than actually inform them of the truth.

The Internet is a tool that requires effort to use and derive value from.

Unfortunately, advertising companies built low-effort dopamine funnels on top and plugged everyone up. This has amplified the more basal animal instincts humans come pre-wired with. Outrage, lust, want, and envy are being micro-stimulated in all of us, constantly, all for the objective function optimization of engagement and ad revenue. Attention has been hijacked, fears have been stoked, and people have been made to hate each other.

We've evolved as individuals and devolved as a whole.

>I don't agree with this. While it's made it possible to be better informed, it isn't the case that everyone is

the now-informed go and inform the uninformed, affecting everybody in a slow and gradual manner -- regardless of the individuals participation.

One didn't have to read in order to be affected by the advent of the printing press.

I've never bothered to research it, but I've always wondered if there were groups that saw the printing press as evil.

In the same way that some thought about radio, TV and now the internet.

In any case any issues with digital media giants aren't the result of the internet, but rather late stage capitalism.

> I've never bothered to research it, but I've always wondered if there were groups that saw the printing press as evil.

You can safely bet money on that.

It's oft forgotten how much more uncertainty we lived with in the pre-internet era. Once you've gotten used to the memex it's hard to imagine life without one.

I was reminiscing the other day about the Encyclopedia Britannica set we bought when I was a child. Probably within the last 10 years dictionaries were sold.

A few years later, Microsoft Encarta [0] was available on CD.

And a decade later, that was gone itself because of the internet.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encarta

Sometimes at work over lunch we have debates or arguments that could easily be solved with a quick google but it's just more fun to let it run its course.