Computers, of course, can be criticized in the same way.

And likewise; computers took a few decades to actually become a widespread economic force. Arguably the impact was quite small if we separate it from the internet (which of-course depends on computers).

Hard to describe the impact of computing as quite small compared to anything, even the internet when you go see those old room sized early IBM computers that were the first commercially viable ones for businesses. They used to have warehouses of payroll documents and armies of people to shuffle around paperwork and crunch numbers and physical people connecting phone lines. Just absolutely fantastically massive amounts of busy work.

Good insight. For a long time, the utility of a computer was tied to its ability to print something onto a sheet of paper. User interfaces came along, too, though. Especially for industrial applications. Then internet was probably the third wave. Now AI is the fourth?

I think it's pretty silly to try to separate the internet from computers.