I have been thinking about this very same premise in two differing ways for quite a while.
The first way is the evil way: I'd love it, if, by some way, happenstance, or random natural accident, half (or more) of the world's current population were to just "vanish" tomorrow (substitute whichever word synonomous with
annul you'd prefer) ; and by "love", I mean I wouldn't be outraged or hysterical about it, and by "tomorrow", I mean a gradual process of a period of decay, whether it be weeks, months, years or decades that has our population equalize to a sub-de-limited state of current conditions.
second part is the "sad pondering" cultural way: of where I am beginning to wonder why and how this generation now, and those that are still being sprung forth tirelessly into the future, can compare to the knowledge of what the average normal person knows today? It's a mind-boggling premise to eloquently state or even begin to expand upon, but for starters, culturally, now and forever, is lost unto what we already hold within ourselves as "must-experiences", such as
King-Kong, The Beatles, Michael Jordan, Hop on Pop, etc. and whatever else you, personally might supplant. It doesn't get any richer than right now, for those of us born from the decades of the 1940s onwards, to as late as 1991, in terms of "equalized", and fundamental, rudimentary, and above all, trivial knowledge. Kids today can't comprehend our dying commentary of the times. And because of that, I'm sure of, the Sunday NYTimes crossword puzzle acumen of the layperson will become either comical, or bordering on the teeterings of a new way to measure a modern-day savant.