As Julie's commentary on IT Conversations shows, I seem to be doing a bad job of explaining why computing is an exciting field to be in:

What I heard on those IT Conversations Ted played in our van were discussions on using technology to help solve the problems of the world. I think it was the first time I had heard computers discussed with such applications and in a way I could comprehend. I was riveted, gripped, hooked. It was as if something in those recordings had taken hold of something inside me.

Julie has seen some of the things that I've worked on during my career. Probably the most concrete was when I was working at Apple on the Newton. You could pick up the device, see that it worked, and so on. But mostly it was just cool. But none of the projects that I've worked on have had the same effect as listening to this one MP3.

Unfortunately, I'm not the only one doing a bad job of explaining the potential impact of computing. When we were students at Brown, Julie took CS4 (the CS course for non-majors)...

Is this what technology is about? I asked Ted. Is this what it can do? Then why, when I took computer science in college, did the instructors have us write programs that played tennis games? Why didn't anyone show me - show all the students - how technology can change the way the world works?

Technology isn't the solution to all the world's problems, but I think that we could certainly be doing better than we are now. But it all starts in the imagination...