As much as I'd like to Krugman-bash, with respect to the implied context of his prediction -- the Internet's effect on the macroeconomy, overall income growth,

As much as I'd like to Krugman-bash, with respect to the implied context of his prediction -- the Internet's effect on the macroeconomy, overall income growth, and standard-of-living -- it wasn't that bad of a prediction. The Internet has massively changed many industries and our ways of living and communicating, especially those of us active on HN. But, the impact in the macro statistics is still.. meh. See also Peter Thiel's laments and Tyler Cowen on 'the great stagnation'. Personally, I suspect there's been a lot of qualitative improvement that doesn't show up in the time-series statistics. (For example, we're taking a lot of the benefit of the Internet in economically-unmetered leisure/shirking.) Also, I'd guess much of the benefit of new computer/telecom efficiencies has just helped offset continuing losses to outdated and parasitic arrangements by entrenched incumbents. (That is: the Internet's boosts-to-growth have somewhat hidden the continuing losses-to-growth from festering things like anti-competitive regulations, socially-broken education and medical incentives, and income-sapping entitlement program financing/payments.) Net-net, we're still on the same (or even a slowed) long-term income trend, whereas if we fully addressed these older things, we'd be seeing the full bonanza of Internet technology.