Why should I assume that the year in which Pluto ceased to be classified as a full-fledged planet, or perhaps a review of different approaches to "secondary orality", are more significant than knowing what restaurants in a radius of a kilometer have received positive reviews from people I trust? Quite frankly, I shouldn't, even though I find it hard not to make a value judgment as to the relative importance of these different sorts of "information".

An earlier version of the sentence which linked to this page ended in "important" rather than with the "special" that's presently there. Deciding which word was the more fitting, which better defined the "it" that I was referring to, became an exercise in examining this ongoing process by which the jaw-dropping so quickly became the ho-hum. Certainly "information" can be "important" without it being "special", something out of the ordinary, something that causes us to stop and reflect that our lives are different because we're so readily able to access it. But that's less significant to the issue at hand than the fact that we've learned to expect, perhaps even demand, what once seemed unachievable.