After a few weeks of being hunkered down and working all kinds of weird hours doing mobile tech support for a couple of thousand users, I’m starting to get a chance to sit up and look around at where things are in the world.

But in doing so, I do so remotely. As do you, if you’re reading this. We have all been suddenly thrust into this strange new world that is partially shut down, and partially virtual.

For the first time in human history, we can continue to carry on large portions of the global economy through virtual methods. Virtual meetings, Internet-based commerce, digital banking, in-home entertainment, and the internet of things. Of course you can’t eat a Tweet. And the sooner we are able to get back to a more normal semblance of life, the better off we will all be.

But the reason I am writing this is to say thanks to a group of people that have been invisibly making large portions of what we do everyday possible at all. And that‘s because they’re the people who make all of our technology possible. From the network engineers, to the call center worker, including the electricians who makes all run, and the hardware repair folks who put it all back together when you break it at the worst possible time, even that annoying office tech guy who grunts every time he has to listen to you swear again and again that it’s not your fault that email hates you, all the ay our to the entire population of earth that is now available to me at the touch of a button on this powerful computer we still call a cell phone.

We live in a world that continues to move at an unprecedented speed, all doing so from our couches now. The whole thing takes a constellation of jobs and technologies to make it all work.

And for that, take a minute to just thank a tech person you rely on. And if you can, resist the urge to ask them a ‘quick question’, just this once.