I'm just saying....dumbing down

I just read a skeet blaming the internet for dumbing us down.

Oh, no, my friend, we did this to ourselves. Project Gutenberg got its start in 1971 and went up on the Internet almost as soon as the public could get subscriptions. It now has over 72,000 documents.

Internet Archive started in 1996. It has billions of web captures and access to the Wayback Machine.

Universities post lectures on line. That's how I got to view Dr. Leonard Susskind's physics lectures based on his book series, The Theoretical Minimum. It's also how I got access to an antique Tanakh in Ladino, written in the Rashi script, and to the 1342 Munich Talmud manuscript which proves that all copies of Talmud now in print have restored what the pope censored in the 1500s.

LiveLingua and other sites provide language learning materials and access to individualized teaching. Websites worldwide, including Liber Liber in Italy; Audiolitterature in France; and a hundred other sites provide access to classics in various languages in audio. Other sites have the texts.

You can access international media to help your language learning: BBC, RFI, Deutsche Welle, RNE, NHK, Kan, and other media post audio, video, and articles online. You can also learn that the US viewpoint is not the only one out there. 

Wordproject and Sefaria are just two of many sites providing access to religious literature in more than one language. Several websites are dedicated to the Quran. Internet Archive has Max Muller's classic Sacred Books of the East. There are sites dedicated to Hindu, Buddhist, and other literature, in various languages.

Openstax and other Creative Commons websites host college level textbooks in business, math and science. There are websites that teach basic or advanced math. 

You can take art studies on the net; most of the well-known art in the world is available, including audio and video. 

If you are dumbed down but you have access to the Internet, you are dumbed down because you choose to be.