To say this is also to say that the age of ready reference is one in which knowledge inevitably declines into information. The master of so much packaged stuff has less need to grasp context or meaning than his forbears: he can always look it up. His active memory is otherwise engaged anyway, full of the arbitrary names, initials, and code figures essential to carrying on daily life. He can be vague about the rest: he can always check it out.

Jacques Barzun (1907-2012) French-American historian, educator, polymath

Essay (1989), “Look It Up! Check It Out!” The Culture We Deserve
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An earlier version of this essay was published in The American Scholar (1986, Autumn).