It was used in exactly the same way. You think the world you live in is based on the honest truth of how things went? Entire families and peoples have been written out of history, for convenience. They are kept out of history for "stability".

Reading should help one think, but it is not to replace thinking...

I mean to some degree it is true in that you have the luxury of forgetting stuff if you know where you can get that information in future. I think many can agree that having access to written and printed word even has been a big positive.

"I cannot remember the books I've read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me." Ralph Waldo Emerson.