What better way to gather the knowledge of others than by reading books?
When I was younger I enjoyed reading Science-Fiction books (especially Dune series from Frank Herbert and Foundation series from Isaac Asimov). In the past 6-7 years I switched to more non-fiction books, as I try to gather as much knowledge that I can in very unrelated domains. Because reading something outside of your focus are will allow you to broaden your knowledge and maybe find solutions to a problem that you are facing from a completely unrelated field.
Kudos for Dune! Also my favorite, as well as Hyperion.
As for learning source, I don`t quite agree. For modern younger generation visual information may be more effective for education.
You are correct, I have a lot of friends who are avid devours of video content. This is the reason Youtube is the second largest search engine, after Google. But the problem I see with visual education is the feeling of understanding it gives you (see this video for an explanation:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-UvSKe8jW4). You watch a video, feel that you understand the problem and then move over to another video. But without sedimentation of the information, it will not pass the barrier between short-term memory and long-term memory so trying to recall something you saw in a video yesterday or to explain the concepts exposed there will prove difficult.
But reading is a task in itself, it takes time and your brain is hard at work visualizing the information you read. This stuff helps you settle the information better in the long-term memory, because it also involves imagination from your part.
Thanks for the suggestion on Hyperion, I will look it up and add it to my read list.