I agree about the importance of, e.g., TCP/IP. But we're headed for James Burke territory now. It's ultimately kind of pointless to argue which inventions in a chain were more important than others: What are the criteria? Who is more important, Einstein or Einstein's mother? Where would Einstein have been without his mother?

And inventions tend to come along when their time is right. Lots of important things are invented simultaneously. That makes it hard to argue that, say, the inventors of Gopher were significantly less brilliant than Tim Berners-Lee, or that OS/2 was less significant than Windows 3.1 from any perspective other than hindsight.

All of which ties into what I think is my greater point: Don't be too hard on yourself about the apparent pointlessness of your work. A lot of pointless things turn out to be worthwhile, and a lot of apparently important things turn out to be pointless.