Publicity that increases the visibility of valuable role models will encourage others to pursue related goals. For the females, the mere fact of success may be sufficient. It strikes me that this is one of the main reasons that we do need more ads with women and girls using computers. No wonder the women often feel discouraged from entering the field of computers or feel that they are not taken seriously once they're there. The media images seem to have affected this man, like the male respondents quoted above who felt images showing women would be unrealistic because women aren't present in the field in that way.
Computers are a big part of our lives and continue to become more and more so.
How we view this technology and how we view ourselves in relation to it will be crucial in determining the effects it will have on our society in the future.