How will humans acquire knowledge (for immediate use or memory) in 25 years?

This was a question I attempted to answer on a new web site named Quora. My answer:

Your question would appear to be two questions, because acquiring knowledge for immediate use is a fundamentally different activity than memorizing knowledge (which is how I understand "acquire knowledge for memory").

The former activity has been technology-driven since at least the invention of the printing press. The availability of authoritative books was crucial in the pre-computer age. If you didn't live near a source of books, or the people who used them a lot, your ability to acquire knowledge was limited.

With the advent of mobile personal computers (e.g., Osborne 1, Tandy Model 100) and rudimentary telecomm (300 baud modems) that let you remotely connect to other resources, you suddenly had the capability to obtain knowledge without having to be where the books, newspapers, etc. were. In large part, this capability remained unrealized, and continues to remain unrealized to this day, because of the difficulties -- both physical and legal -- of committing printed documents to the digital format.

Still, the explosive growth of the Internet in the 80's and 90s and the subsequent appearance of search engines turned "google" into a verb, even if quite a bit of the information out there is unvetted. Our connectivity has improved to the point where such resources are available pretty much anywhere there's a cellular signal.

So what can we expect in the next quarter-century? Higher storage densities and improved communications will allow quicker access to more information. Doubtless search engines will evolve in a way to better "understand" what information is being sought (analogous to the way a graphical interface gives you capabilities unavailable via a command-line interface).

Probably the most difficult task over the next 25 years will be to develop the mechanisms required to be able to readily distinguish wheat from chaff as far as the reliability and veracity of information is concerned. The major roadblock in this area, in my opinion, will be the good intentions of various parties to mold what information is out there to fit their world-view paradigm.

As far as memorization is concerned, it should be noted that every major technological breakthrough -- starting with the development of writing -- has had an adverse impact on memorization. As our technology improves, our need to memorize has been reduced. Our need to learn basic skills has been reduced. There's a generation of kids out there that cannot do multiplication without a calculator.

Memorizing information may experience something of a renaissance over the next quarter-century, and if it does, it will probably consist of computer-aided implementation of classic systems ranging from flash cards with entirely new levels of bells and whistles (say, the generation of automatic clozes or the creation of new test cases based on inadequately mastered existing cases) to systems that aid in the visualization of mnemonic images and memory palaces.

Cheers...