[quarok]

The problem is that if you don't commit information to long-term memory you can't use it reason effectively in other contexts, and you have to add it back to your short-term memory every time you look it up -- so outsourcing your memory to a knowledge bank is limiting the complexity of the tasks you can handle.

So there might be more information you're expected to know in modern jobs -- but if you spend a bit more time consolidating rather than acquiring new information, you can build the foundations on which more advanced skills can rest.

For transparency: I work with the OP

[skadamat]

A key point here is that our brains don't work like computer hard drives. Our brains are a lot closer to how, in biology, a single cell stores the entire DNA "data" that's needed to replicate but just using a few base pairs.

We likely store information more in some type of loose graph structure, where we recall / "remember" something by re-creating links to that piece of information. There seems to be very very little "storage cost" for the billions of pieces of information we keep in our brains.