Internet and Consciousness

The fundamental contents of the Internet are data, which therein undergo a variety of processes--transformation, storage, retrieval, transmission, etc.  But such data processing presupposes another operation which is not among them--data input.  In other words, in terms of traditional Philosophical categories--the Internet may be 'artificial intelligence', but it is not 'artificial sentience', unlike, for example, self-driving vehicles, which can detect other entities in its proximity.  Now, despite their differences, most concepts of Consciousness entail a distinction between subject and object, i. e. the presence of something alterior to Consciousness.  In other words, Consciousness usually entails sentience.  So, the characterization of the Internet as Collective Consciousness is misleading.