I don't see how this is meaningfully distinct from Alicorn's sweater. Sweater-ness is not a property of cloth fibers or buttons.

I think the real problem here is that consciousness is so dark and mysterious. Because the units are so small and fragile, we can't really take it apart and put it back together again, or hit it with a hammer and see what happens. Our minds really aren't evolved to think about it, and, without the ability to take it apart and put it back together and make it happen in a test tube - taking good samples seems to rather break the process - it's extremely difficult to force our minds to think about it. By contrast, we're quite used to thinking about sweaters or social organization or websites. We may not be used thinking about say, photosynthesis or the ATP cycle, but we can take them apart and put them back together again, and recreate them in a test tube.