The new web -- Web 2.0 and Mobile Access and how its changing our ideas of knowledge.

Over the past two years we've seen a great deal of change in the way that people are using the Internet. Social networking has exploded, people are connecting to each other in ways that we never thought possible. You can now keep up with your brothers day to day life, even if he lives in a different country. The news you read is no longer regulated by what an editorial staff wants, instead sites like digg.com allow the users to say what stories are worth reading and which are not. A site like Myspace.com has turned networking into a hobby. Blogs have exploded and are now breaking stories before big news outlets. The web is now becoming what many of its early adopters thought it would be, a truly social network of information.
The ways we access this information is also drastically changing. Mobile access has become more and more common, be it wi-fi from your laptop or access from your cell phone, you can now access the web from almost anywhere.
So what does this mean? Well for one its making for a generally more well informed populace. For instance, perhaps you are at Best Buy and looking at a new car stereo, you like all its features but man does it seem expensive. Well while your standing there why not pull out your phone, bring up froogle and check out the prices from other retailers? Hey you just saved 100$ bucks on that purchase.
As more and more information moves online we are also gaining the ability to know far more information than we had previously been able too. If you can't remember the conversion from Euro to USD just pull it up on your phone, it is almost as good as being able to do the conversion in your head. Maybe you don't remember who that actor was that played Tuco in "The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly", well you don't have to spend all day with that nagging you in the back of your brain, just pull it up on your phone on IMDB.com.
As the technology of social networking and mobile access continue to integrate into our lives I suspect knowledge will increasingly be thought of as not only something you have inside you, but something you have quick access too. That is to say that simply being able to rattle off some random trivia will no longer be thought of as being knowledgeable, many might start to wonder why you take the time to remember such things when you could just as easily keep a bookmark to it.
The web is now becoming our own shared brain. We no longer have to rely on ourselves to retain certain facts, someone, somewhere has answered the questions we are asking and the answers are only a few clicks away, no matter where you might be.