Roads and plumbing have been around since the Romans (we just forget about them for a thousand years or so).
I would put them, as well as the use of electricity for power, the internal combustion engine and flight on a different branch of the technology tree (do we have any Civ players in the house?).
The Internet most closely resembles the printing press - the mass dispersal and availability of information. Consider that before print, almost nobody was literate. There were few books, and those that existed were hoarded by priests and the very wealthy. People relied on priests to tell them what was in the Bible. The only way to salvation was to do what the priests told you to do. That gave the Church and royalty unimaginable power. The printing press made mass producing the Bible easy and meant that everyone could read it for themselves. Eventually other ideas made it into books. Like now, entire kingdoms and governments fell. England, France, Spain, Portugal and Germany all went from Monarchy to Democratic Republic. Today, the Internet is doing the same thing the printing press did, but is doing it much faster. For the printing press to revolutionize the world took numerous generations. Social media on the Internet has taken years - even months - to sweep Monarchs and Dictators away. The question now is will the people choose a Democratic Republic like "we" did, or choose something else?
