Let's talk about layers. Layers are what make computers work, in every sense of the word. Software is constructed as a series of access layers that keep the whole from being too obtuse or cumbersome. A user's degree of control of a computer relies on his or her ability to understand and manipulate multiple layers of hardware, from the chipsets in the tower, to the input ports at access points, to interface tools like keyboards and mouses. Even the business and culture of computers operate by layers of creation, marketing, use and feedback. Recently, the world lost two of its pioneering layer agents in computer technology. Everybody knows about the passing of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, but there has been a much quieter period of mourning for Dennis Ritchie, the man whose work made the inventions of Steve Jobs possible.

It's hard to say where the buck stops when it comes to computer technology. It's a natural outgrowth of thousands of years of human thought and invention. Maybe find the first caveman who counted on his fingers and you'll come close to the simplest seed of computing. More recently we can point to guys like Alan Turing who fathered modern computer theory. If you're looking for a good starting point for the Internet and home computers, though, you could certainly do worse than Dennis Ritchie. Ritchie did extensive and mind-blowingly important work with another legend named Ken Thompson at Bell Labs in the 1960's and beyond. These two guys invented the programming languages and early operating systems that served as the foundation of pretty much everything. They made the B programming language with which they built UNIX, then improved upon it with a far more nuanced and powerful language called C. Long story short, everything is C. Every operating system you've ever used, every website you've ever surfed, every video game you've ever played was either built with C or one of its derivatives.

That said, Dennis Ritchie (who died just a few days ago) and Ken Thompson didn't make the Internet. They didn't create the modern conception of the website, email, Flash or the iPhone. That wasn't, to keep the theme running, their layer. Ritchie and Thompson come from those deep labs where using a computer requires reading a heavy manual (which they also wrote with Brian Kernighan), a place where the idea of the average schlub or second grader doing amazing things with a computer is more science fiction than modern business.

To get computers from the deep labs to the homes of a large portion of the regular folks of the world, you need the layer where guys like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs work. They make stuff you can use with the touch of a button, stuff that does things that matter to you. They take technology that's confusing to the computer layman even when it's simplified through a graphical representation and turn it into the thing that plays your music or makes your work day easier.

And then we get to the Internet and thoroughly conversational tech like Youtube. This is why the revolution is happening right now. Internet tech that relies on users contributing content by understanding just a little code (usually HTML) is the layer that potentially includes our entire species. It's the response to the call pioneers like Turing, Ritchie, Thompson and their ilk made decades ago. In this sense, there is no "end user" anymore, just an endless communication through computing. I'm glad the deep lab geeks and access dreamers like Ritchie and Jobs got to live to see this tech revolution come to pass, even if they left us the moment the curtain opened.