Connectivism - am I connected to the pipe?

I hope that our collective connectivism pipe (or network with your collective wisdom) will help me process (cognitively, as individual :) all that I have heard and read from George Siemens during the week.

I can relate and agree with his key ideas, such as that the rapid growth of knowledge and changes in technology revolutionize the ways we acquire the information. The connections to networks that continuously acquire new knowledge and our capacity to learn more become very important aspect of the learning process in the digital age.

However, I am still not sure about “more important than our current state of knowing”. Doesn’t one’s ability to process the new information (content of the pipe) depend on the individual’s prior knowledge? Being connected to a network seems valuable for me only when I am able to understand what they are talking about and yes, interested, motivated and able to acquire that new knowledge as an individual. At that point my individual learning would occur.
Otherwise, at best I would just be basing my action on somebody else’s knowledge or combined knowledge of the community without learning much myself.

Let me illustrate:
Let’s assume I need to buy a new digital camera. I have little or no prior knowledge of how digital camera works and what characteristics make it a better camera. But I am connected to the network where experienced digital photographers review all new models and forum participants are rated by their peers. I would probably skip all the details and read some quick summary recommendations, look at the ratings and choose a particular camera. I completed the action, but did not learn much. All learning about the new models happened outside of me, so I will have to go back the next time to read more reviews. What do you think?