The real literacy: Does Literacy = Cultured?

Literacy to me really doesn’t mean what it once meant to me. I once believed literacy was the ability to speak, read, and write a language properly and scholastically. Today, many people that are considered literate seem to posses no actual mental capacity. Some of our past presidents and political figures would not meet my old standard of minimal literacy. I feel that a literate person should be a person that would be able to contribute something worth wild to any conversation with any topic. I believe that a literate person should always have something interesting and intellectual to say on any matter, even if the topic of discussion is unfamiliar to him or her. The fact that a person can learn from a conversation, (and when I say conversation, I mean a conversation about something worth talking about which could include world issues, scholastic articles, current events, or even a good book) and can appreciate the actual topic of discussion, makes a person not only literate but very interesting.
However, if you look at the literal meaning of the word "literacy" you could say that a literate person is one that can read and write. But in today’s era, this term is also transitioning into a meaning of technological literacy. But lets say a person is able to read, write, and navigate the web; what would that do for a person if he or she can not think critically about the subject being read about? Therefore, I go back to the point that a person whom is literate is not only that, but he must be a person who possesses some sort of intellectual ability in order to articulate the items being read.