It is a bicycle for the mind. Remember back when if you wanted to learn about a topic, you had to travel to a library, spend a couple hours looking up books in a card catalogue, and then find 1 book, that maybe answers your question. I'm constantly using the internet to learn new things, to learn about all kinds of things (e.g. Californian urchin galls, best way to process small branches for firewood, the use bison horn fire carriers among Plains Indians, the grub hoe, etc. etc.; I'm constantly using Google Lens to identify plants in my area, which ones are native, which ones invasive, etc.)

The problem is something else. The problem is that the internet is more than one thing. It is a couch for the lazy, a distraction for the procrastinator, a massive entertainment delivery device; and most of the monetary value of the internet doesn't come from it being a bicycle for the mind, but for the other things.

Not everyone chooses to ride on the bicycle. Instead of, say, reading Wikipedia, they read Infowars. The world would be a much better place if a lot of people spent their time reading Wikipedia (with all of its faults) instead of scrolling Twitter, Facebook, and slanted news sites like Breitbart, CNN, Fox, etc. etc. etc.