If tomorrow meteo info is only available through smoke signals, any responsible pilot will learn to read those. I just hope these words will not bring bad inspiration...
I think many won't, if it is too hard.
But often it doesn't matter. If you fly for 30nm then you can get a good enough picture by looking out of the window.
This is how I think it used to work. Speaking to some friends of mine confirms this. One 2000hr+ pilot says he cannot read tafs or metars. He flies at low levels mostly. He is a great bloke and I can see how he gets away with it, along with many others. For most short-ish flights you don't need a weather briefing; it is "VFR" after all
The problem is Notams... there is no way to avoid those, and one day it
will bite you.
I am willing to believe there was less sense of responsability in earlier days, when traffic was much less dense, and those who grew up in that mentality are unlikely to change it overnight. But that has nothing to do with internet litteracy.
I don't think there was less traffic. (If you go back some decades, there was less controlled airspace, but CAS busts are another issue).
I think that the only notam that is really going to get you into trouble is an RA or temporary Class A (usually the Royal Family going somewhere) but if you go back say 20 years, not many had transponders so were much harder to track afterwards
BTW every a/d I have visited round here has a PC with internet access available to pilots, and there's generally someone around to help if required. Lack of internet ability is really not a proper excuse!
Not so in the UK. Some airfields have a public PC but most don't - unless you walk into a school and ask them nicely. My own base (a full ATC airfield) has no internet facilities. It has a PC which is hacked to file flight plans etc but you cannot get internet on it. There is not even free/open WIFI so the only way is your own laptop with GPRS/3G.
They arrived at the airport by some magic or other and were put up on the notice board each morning, for you to read before take-off.
But those were
local area notams. Notams for a reasonable route, say a 100nm flight somewhere, could never be thus presented. People just flew without them, usually, or phoned up for a briefing. In my PPL, I was never taught to get notams myself.