With the arrival of the information age I think we have produced way more smart people than ever before. The internet has become such a powerful tool to educate yourself, anybody with an cellphone has a tremendous amount of knowledge in their pocket. Too bad many people choose to not use it to it's fullest potential.
you might be confusing 'smartness' with something else entirely ... idiots educated beyond the level of their intellectual capacity is not a new phenomena .... probably the internet has just created a swag more of these dangerous fools .... case in point take jbreher with his dunning-kruger tendencies now leading him to write in overly-eloquent verbiage to convey trivial, and usually erroneous, meandering thoughts; then hops on his high-horse about a computer science and networking design matter that is clearly well-outside his grasp, and follows up to defend his bruised ego by championing a cause that is clearly to his economic detriment ... that fact alone encapsulates educated beyond their intelligence.