Or, at least, InformationWeek’s nominations. We think they’re mostly right.

In summary:

12. The Morris Worm

Or, how to singlehandedly bring down the Internet accidentally. Everyone hated it, but it sure was clever.

11. Google search rank

Hard to argue this hasn’t changed the (Western) world.

10. Apollo guidance system

They went to the moon on less computing power than we have in our iPod, for cying out loud.

9. Excel

Made good on Visicalc’s promise, and made spreadsheets friendly and powerful for the masses. Perhaps Microsoft’s best work ever.

8. Mac OS (pre-OS X)

Cribbed as it was from Xerox, it still changed the way computers worked. Apple’s ad line from that era said it all: “The computer for the rest of us.”

7. SAAbre system

Or, how American managed to steal market share by letting everyone use their system. Very clever.

6. Mosaic browser

Mosaic was the first graphical browser; it moved the web from a land of nerds to something everyone could use.

5. Java (Feh.)

We’re not so sure about this one. (We kid; Java’s VM approach and “write once, run everywhere” philosophy took a while to really come through, but its benefits are inassailable.)

4. IBM System 360 OS

The grandaddy of Big Iron systems — and the first real general-purpose operating system.

3. The gene sequencing software at the Institute for Genomic Research

Dude, they’re unraveling DNA. Nuff said.

2. IBM’s System R

System R was the precursor to relational databases, which is to say the smarts that underlie virtually every database system now in use anywhere — from Oracle to MySQL to PostGres.

1. Unix in general and BSD 4.3 specifically

Without Unix, we’d have no Internet. Without BSD, we’d probably have no free and Free software movement, no OS X, etc.

The single Greatest Piece of Software Ever, with the broadest impact on the world, was BSD 4.3. Other Unixes were bigger commercial successes. But as the cumulative accomplishment of the BSD systems, 4.3 represented an unmatched peak of innovation. BSD 4.3 represents the single biggest theoretical undergirder of the Internet. Moreover, the passion that surrounds Linux and open source code is a direct offshoot of the ideas that created BSD: a love for the power of computing and a belief that it should be a freely available extension of man’s intellectual powers–a force that changes his place in the universe.

If you haven’t heard of some of these, you’re not geeky enough to have an opinion. ;)