Will people be expected to know less and less? Does this matter?

I just watched this short video of some typical-looking students at a typical-looking American high school being asked some very basic questions. These are questions that I’m pretty sure wouldn’t have given students in my high school um, many years ago any problem. And I sure didn’t go to some great high school.

This makes me wonder whether we’re moving away from the expectation that there are certain basic facts that everyone should know. Has easy access to information via the web made such basic knowledge irrelevant?

I’m sure that facts like those featured in the video are still taught in school, but I wonder whether they’re simply not retained because students know that the information is right out there in the cloud in the unlikely event that they’ll need it.

If this is so, that seems like a significant development to me. I’m a bit horrified, but I’m willing to hear arguments for why this shouldn’t worry me. Maybe the essential knowledge of the future will just be how to find information, apply it, then forget about it again.

Distopia? Utopia? Whatever?