we don't need to know how to write in our own hand anymore

Thank the maker. Handwriting sucks.

nor suffer the catastrophe of serendipitously discovering something whilst researching something else

You've never been on Wikipedia then, I take it.

actually have to interact with another human being

*cough* What are you doing right now? There are many hundreds of people I've spent quality time with that I never would have known otherwise. Amazingly, we used to actually get together and drink beer and grill things too, every 4th (miss you, Bill).

We'll never learn anything we don't specifically want to learn.

That's not the fault of "private IT". There have always been and ever will be the willfully ignorant.