To be fair, when I was a kid, we didn't have internet. We only had library, and computer journals, the paper kind. Nowadays, for research papers, read arxiv. For news read hackernews. For learning stuff, Google, stack overflow. Fiction? Kindle app.
That's amusing as I posted this article, I am homeless and I have a laptop, tablet and smartphone.
Yes, I spend my days at the library to get charge for my devices, free Wi-Fi and access to public PCs. But I am dirt poor and all my earned income comes via the internet.
A lot more poor people have a computer today than ever before. Nothing illustrates this better than seeing the homeless on their iPhones using the Starbucks wifi to access the Internet.
This is true, and a very, very good thing I think. But it's the prosaic stuff (how do I claim this? Where do I actually look for information? What information will help me? Etc) where having a real person sit and help you is incredibly important.