Bernard Chazelle says CS lacks a "great popularizer" such as Stephen Hawking in physics. Does CS need such a person?

Birman: I tend to view Bill Gates as our most public advocate, but I agree with Chazelle about this. We need a guy like Oliver Sacks or Carl Sagan, and the field doesn't have anyone in this role.

Canny: To be brutally realistic, I think that CS as it's constructed today isn't as exciting as other sciences. It's necessarily a handmaiden, and other scientists see it as such. But Nicholas Negroponte [co-founder of the MIT Media Lab] is almost surely as charismatic and media-savvy as anyone in physics.

Dally: I would say that CS needs a serious public relations effort. A prime-time TV show, Silicon Valley Software, could also do a lot of good, if done right, to show people what computing careers are really about and to clear up many misconceptions about the field.

Carbonell: CS needs a great communicator who lives the excitement, is deeply respected by his or her peers, and can reach out and communicate clearly with any educated person via his books. We have no such person in CS. Perhaps Raj Reddy [a Carnegie Mellon computer science professor] has the right kind of talents.