To add to that, there is so much information and so many topics available that although you can chose a few areas to specialise in, there would never be a hope of coming across a fraction of it all, if we didn't have those shiny nuggets in places like wikipedia.

Acknowledging the limitations of wiki, it at the very least introduces you to new things. And should you be inspired enough you have the choice of following it up in depth.

But absolutely, the constant stream of trivia coming at us all makes it far too easy to allow short attention spans and a preference for easy chunks of information to rule how we learn.  The skills to concentrate and critically analyse what we are reading are extremely important and the key issue is around whether or not this is being taught/encouraged properly.