What is [[Modal]] (to an audience of my people at Harvard/MIT):
(Preface: I really like computers! Just saying.)
Modal does two things: rent out flexible increments of compute, and build the systems for people to interact with remote computers.
Why? Computers are all around us; you checked the weather this morning, but a wind turbine operator might check the state of the electrical grid, restaurants manage inventory, even the ISS navigates in orbit with computers.
Computers are how we process huge amounts of data (in energy, elections, housing, biology…), which would never be possible by hand, and in that sense computation augments how we understand the world.