You don't need to know anything.

Rembrandt was born in 1606 in what was the Dutch Republic, but is now the Netherlands. Two minutes ago I didn't know that. With a wave of my magic wand (actually The Big Red Laptop) I found the info. No need to suffer the gap between knowing and not knowing. A comedian recently stated this means the time between knowing and not-knowing is so short as to make them essentially the same. So I posit, is that such a bad thing?

Smartphones, smartwatches, smartglasses, smartcontacts, Gibson-esque nanotech brain implants... I'd say the ability to access any piece of human knowledge on the go is here to stay. (Barring zombie apocalypse. Those guys ruin everything.) I graduated from college without Google. We actually had to know stuff.

Plato was a student of Socrates. Aristotle was a student of Plato. They laid the foundation of western thought. I've known that for twenty years, thanks to Mrs. Mishler and her class on Philosophy. But is knowing facts so important? The sky is blue. Big fucking deal. Nitrogen in the atmosphere scatters the light in the blue wavelength. Now you know. Thanks Mr. Ganske, and 8th grade science teachers everywhere.

But knowing stuff is easy. It is also nearly instantaneous and fairly accurate. Yet we are graduating students through school- based on the idea that knowing stuff will make you successful and therefore you must know x,y, and z to graduate. Then you graduate and clumsily look up all the stuff you forgot when you need it most. A movement started by Simon has destroyed our minds and educational system.

Not to worry, I have a solution. We just stop teaching things you should know. Seriously. How about we teach stuff you do?

How about logic to think more effectively?
Languages
Search techniques (I'm biased there.)
Martial arts
Programming
Cooking and sewing even
Driving
Art and Music
Balancing a checkbook

Then later if you need to know when the American Civil War happened, you can buy a smartphone with your balanced checkbook and look it up with your advanced search skills. A world full of people who know how to do things is more valuable than one where we merely know things.

Dinosaurs like me who learned tons of facts and can recall with clarity will act superior for about a decade and we will still beat you at Trivial Pursuit. Feel bad about it all the way to your piloting lesson.