[matt4077]

This article is posted here to embarrass Krugman, but if you look at GDP growth over time, you'd think there should be a kink in the graph /somewhere/ to account for the economic benefits of the internet.

It's possible that growth would have been even more anaemic without the internet, but that's hard to argue from the data.

[snrplfth]

Well, you could say that the internet was not a totally unique thing in itself, but just another (big) forward step in the ever-improving telecommunications sector, which had already seen the expansion of telegraphs, radio, telephones, and so on, and would also have represented big improvements in communication capacity.