My problem is that it seems to largely feature on the level of anecdata, but not make it beyond that. It is more a hypothesis like: the rather moderate aggregat

My problem is that it seems to largely feature on the level of anecdata, but not make it beyond that. It is more a hypothesis like: the rather moderate aggregate progress wouldn't have happened without the internet - but how to show that? People managed huge coordination efforts before the internet (just take the US in WWII with half the GDP dedicated to war efforts). So claims about the effect of the internet from better coordination there need a lot to substantiate them.