I don't think immortality is necessarily the key to understanding the world. You have to be careful with what you think you're achieving. I'm all for science discovering amazing and fantastic things about our world but I think the motivations behind it are slightly askew.
Wikipedia is just an incredible thing. It is fact-encirclingly huge and it is idiosyncratic careful messy funny shocking and full of simmering controversies - and it is free and it is fast.