Information sharing is an extremely low barrier kind of favor because when I give you some information, I still have it too. When we no longer need each other to learn about that hole in the wall restaurant, that new band, how to fix a leaky sink, we have also lost important tools to forge connections with each other.
I worry a lot that the Internet and cheap consumer goods has essentially knocked the bottom rungs off the ladder of human relationships. I don't need others to find a place to eat or live, or to learn a new skill or hobby. But I do still need them to share my feelings and worries with. But it's really hard to jump straight to the level of relationship where you can talk about those things without going through several rounds of "Hey, can I borrow your drill?" and "Do you remember who voiced Fred Flintstone?"
And yet the best information is still person-to-person, old school. It lives in the cracks that software misses and where review systems are gamed. Finding good Indian food is hard - but the locals know. Who has an open mic night? Hard to say without connections. Maybe the ultimate example is real estate - deep knowledge of any given place comes after you've lived there, and understand it's history, is life. And that's impossible to represent online.
>cheap consumer goods
Yes: making everything in Shenzen is a problem because now it's the only community that knows how to make and fix things. (Obviously its not 100% the case, but its mostly the case.) That lack of distributed ability has follow-on effects that we don't understand yet -- most worryingly having to do with national security, but also about agency and curiosity and self-determination. Maybe we should have to pass a test before being allowed to use any particular object, showing that we at least know how its made and where it's constituent parts come from.
I find it quite irritating sometimes - can we not just talk about it! - and it's not like I have a long memory before it was possible. (I grew up with phones certainly, was in school when they became 'smart'.)
In a way, we've regressed back before we had the answer machine at our fingertips. You don't really know who's correct. It's just changed from 'Well, I heard xyz from my friend's aunt's sister, so I'm right. Oh yeah! Gary just said the opposite yesterday, so you're wrong' to something a little bit different.
But unfortunately people's brains are fried because of the constant social media bombardment.
I don't miss those. Before the Internet, if it wasn't on an encyclopedia and you weren't at the library, you had no way of corroborating information.
On the other hand, since facts are so accessible right now, those arguments have shifted to voicing their feelings and wishes because those can't be falsified.