Okay, that makes more sense.

I think it's because a lot of that stuff doesn't get as much publicity. I'm fairly clueless about Unix: I know that Linus guy did something, but I am not well-versed in Unix's history.

That might actually be a fascinating thing: a publication or web site or blog devoted to exploring stuff like that, explaining why they're so huge and so important, and getting information like that out there. I feel bad* that I don't know more about my computer and about coding systems beyond that top layer, but at the same time I don't know where I'd start to learn about things like that. (The closest I got was with _why's explanation of why Ruby is neat, and even that was enough to inspire a real fascination with the language. I'm sure that sort of attitude could be more commonplace.)

*Specifically, something to do with Linux.