The advantage of facts in your head is that they can be mixed in with things you already know, provide context for new things you learn, and used to form new thoughts. While any given fact might be easy to retrieve from the internet, I can't use it until I ask for it. And I can't know in advance what the best facts to know are, so I try to put as much in my head as I can.
Well said. I think the best example of this would be the trivia geek; full of useless information, but almost always a well learned individual with wonderful ideas.
