In the classic American comedy Animal House, the school motto at fictional Faber College is "Knowledge is good."

No kidding.

It is now widely accepted what really separated mankind from the rest of the natural world was our opposable thumb and the ability to learn. Slow, defenceless and edible, early man either got smart quick or died trying.

Absent any natural advantages like flight or body armour, we had to count on our intelligence to even the playing field. In those days, however, acquiring knowledge was a slow process and often hazardous.

After all, the way to find out if a plant was food or foe was to eat one and see what happened. Using this trial and error method, early information gathering cost many an inquisitive ancestor his life.

Lessons about interaction with the other animals were also hard learned and fraught with misadventure. Certainly the guy who discovered a skunk's smelly little secret paid a price and its difficult not to feel sorry for the first person who found out lions don't share. Eventually, though, as we developed tribes and societies, we became better at sharing information and great leaps forward took place.

Not surprisingly given human nature, one of the first things we got better at was making weapons. Having started out with only a heavy stone or a pointed stick, we quickly developed better and more efficient ways of killing prey and each other.

We breezed through Bronze Ages and Iron Ages when civilizations first used metals to fashion weapons. We sped past the long bow days into the gunpowder age and now, of course, we find ourselves smack dab in the midst of the nuclear age. Heck, as the U.S. recently demonstrated, we can even shoot things in outer space.

Knowledge, of course, will always be good, but one wonders these days if we haven't shifted our focus from knowledge to information and, in doing so, confused the two. Information, as dear old Merriam-Webster confirms, is the "communication or reception of knowledge."

In other words, by reading that a picosecond is one, one millionth of one millionth of a second, you have been exposed to information. Still knowing that next week, however, means you have knowledge.

Remarkably though, as a society, while we seem to be obsessed with information, we also appear to be getting dumber by the minute.

While the Internet is undoubtedly the greatest information sharing vehicle since Gutenberg invented the printing press, most casual users report going online mostly to surf, game or chat. In order to get noticed amidst all the hubbub, knowledge nowadays is packaged and portioned out in easy to read snippets and factoids.

Everything it seems is listed or ranked. We not only know the 10 highest mountains, we also know history's 25 most depressing songs. We know after 13 years on top of the financial heap, Microsoft founder Bill Gates is no longer the richest man alive. In fact, he's not even top two material anymore.

While information concerning his slip in the rankings may be upsetting for Mr. Gates, no doubt he is comforted by the knowledge he still has 58 million thousand dollar bills to play with.