On the irony of programmers who don't like abstraction (eaf4.com)

"ActiveRecord is hardly "the depths". After ActiveRecord, your data will probably go through Ruby's I/O system, TCP stacks, IP stacks, low level kernel I/O, firmware on network cards, a database management system (itself comprising multiple layers of semantics), and will ultimately move some electrons around somewhere."

What are "the depths" according to him then?