There's a difference between data and knowledge. Knowledge is what's extracted and made intelligible from data. Production and storage of knowledge was so expensive and scarce that if you find something from Iraq 3000 years ago there's a high likelihood there'll be some knowledge in there.

Most stuff produced today is not only not knowledge, as of now the majority may not even be human. If you're living in the metaphorical Wall-E garbage mountain filtering and disposal are much more important skills than accumulation