You don't always know all the ways that your work matters. Two decades when I was working as a corporate photojournalist, I interviewed a female meteorologist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, CO. She had participated a field team studying the newly-disovered ozone hole over South America. We discussed the need for more powerful visualization tools to transform the complex atmospheric chemical measurements into meaning, and the role of the government's national network of supercomputers in supporting that task.

The following year, I journeyed to CERN, the superconductor-supercollider center in Switzerland, to learn about the new protocol -- HTTP -- being developed to improve physicists' abilities to globally share voluminous information in more meaningful ways. I spoke there with mid-career physicists who were devoting their attention to improving the global scientific communities' networking and communications tools -- soon to become the World Wide Web.

While sensing the importance of these developments as I wrote about them, I didn't immediatelyl grasp the total future shift each implied. I did learn to appreciate the power of data in the hands of an inquisitive mind. These many years later, I appreciate that we don't always know what questions matter the most until we -- or others coming after us -- discover the answers. The key is to keep asking questions.