I think it's probably making some people stupid; but it's making a lot more people smarter. I always love these articles that start with the idea that reading books is the greatest thing in civilization, as though the vast majority of people do it, uh, instinctively :-)
About the only thing I've ever admired about academic research is the footnote: give your reader the references to your sources which you're using to support your claim. I think that the intarwebs, with their access, breadth of content, and ease-of-use ("Click here to learn more!"), has caused a lot more people to frame their claims in this context; and a lot more people can/do fact-check them because of it. You even see it here on LBO-Talk: people are looking for (and increasingly finding!) information to support and enlarge opinions and thoughts about an expanding set of issues that they would not have approached without this kind of access.
Plus, The Google has pretty much put Trivial Pursuit out of business.
/jordan