I guess in terms of imagination you are just rearranging past experiences from memory, nothing special.
The internet may have messed with your head. You can only create an experience from something you did yourself with your own senses.
If someone tells you some information you create a story using your own experiences.
Much like how everyone reads a book but imagines things differently.
They'll pull an image like "castle" out of their memory of movies based in the 15th century. If you've actually been in a castle you might even imagine what it smells like in a castle or something.
The internet probably makes us create alot of stories but with pretty stale experiences (never having been to a castle, driven on the other side of the road, ridden in a plane, etc.) so everyone has this really sterile view of the world now.
Small planes vibrate so much it feels like... windy. Maybe the seals on them aren't that great either. One person might read about riding in a small plane and imagine just the buzzing engine like on TV but someone who has been in a small plane knows its a vibrating windy loud crazy environment. And there is really no replacing the actual experience.
People today have like zero actual experience but they've done a ton of reading in college & the internet so everyone has a "Stale" story in their head.
In the past I would imagine it was the opposite without computers, everyone had all these experiences in their head and so learning information was the critical component they needed. Might be why college in the 1950's, 1960's, 1970's, etc was so effective compared to now. What people probably need now these days is just doing "stuff"