I remember being a kid in the 80s and fascinated by the SDI "Star Wars" project for missile defense. I wanted to learn everything I possibly could about how lasers and particle beams worked, how they were built, how much power they could project, how far, what targeting capabilities were realistic, where you might actually have to place ground stations to fully cover the sky, some raw basics of how spherical geometry and orbital mechanics worked. Most weekends, and definitely every summer for several years, I rode my bike down to the LA County Public Library and checked out the maximum number of books they allowed you to check out, and I did just this. I learned everything I possibly could. I barely remember any of it cause I was like 8 years old, but still, enormous amounts of information have been available to anyone, at least in the US, for a long time. I don't think "printed material" should be a barrier. It takes longer to get to the library than it does to open your laptop or unlock your phone, but the flip side of that is getting outside and riding your bike around incidental to gathering information has quite a few ancillary health benefits you'll never realize if you're tied to a computer all the time.

Ok, but the equivalent for me was in the very early 1980s and I lived in an English village outside a small market town. Their library certainly didn't have any current in-depth book on the computing topics I was interested in. I recall coming across the term "cybernetics" in some tome from the 1950s that was about all they had and being completely unable to connect it to the microcomputers that I was fascinated by.

Probably it would have been possible to get something via inter-library loan, but I would have been 9 or 10, didn't know this was possible and didn't think to ask. The handful of topical books I obtained from parents and schoolfriends was a far cry from just scrolling on your phone to the information you want.

It's not better in every way. But it is better in some ways.