While the reference information one can obtain depends on the quality of essential information one possesses to access the full capabilities of any information system, retaining vast knowledge truly becomes less important than using it.
Information literacy requires that students become judicious users of information.
Critical thinking will be exercised every time a decision is made about what to choose from massive resources with accompanying agendas, value messages, sophistication, and intended purposes none of which may be explicitly stated. Faculty of higher education have made great use of their own information literacy in their research, but have only begun to recognize the implications for cataclysmic changes in undergraduate teaching. Even in active learning, we professors have taken primary responsibility for what is taught by our writing of the textbooks, the collaborative exercises, and even the cases for discussion teaching. Because our students can more freely explore a topic, ultimately we won't be able to depend on any two students having studied the topic from exactly the same materials. As faculty, we should expect to become less prominent as experts who dispense information and answer questions, but we'll become more important as facilitators who help students to locate, critique, and synthesize.