Yes and No. Almost daily, I am reminded of knowledge that defuses into the general public via the "internet robustness". My sense is that in cosmopolitan areas, new information is absorbed by "persons with special interest" and is then passed on to their influence group at some distilled level, wherein the transmission repeats, such that the information ultimately reaches a broad audience. In the Ozarks all of the "persons with special interests", i.e. the J.D. Vances/the1400SAT kids.....well, they all run away.
No doubt our "community/state/nation/culture/species" will survive without updated general knowledge about particle physics. This is far less obvious when the knowledge involves psychology, sociology, medicine, economics, law, etc."
Today I noted information about anti-trust litigation regarding the rapidly emerging commerce in the "cancer blood testing" boom. The point....virtually no one in the Ozarks, probably including our doctors, knows anything about this revolutionary diagnostic tool.
Maybe we Ozarkians are descendants of those early hominids who only got the hang of fire around the 15th century.