Is the following a good analogy?
1. The Internet aspires to be neutral infrastructure for communication.
2. Permissionless blockchains aspire to be neutral infrastructure for computation.

Head of research at a16z crypto.
Professor, Columbia University.

So this could be too nitpicky / unsexy for public audience, but I think I would say:

"
1. The Internet aspires to be neutral infrastructure for *digital communication*

2. Permissionless blockchains aspire to be neutral infrastructure for *digital records*
"

playing /bracket, assisting /bracky, talking /greatbooks

Reasoning:

Emphasizing *digital* places focus on how much has changed about human life due to technology

Saying *record* captures Bitcoin case, which is meaningful. And compute is technically an application of records

One strategy I use is asking people to reflect on how much of their life rn is a *digital record*

Thanks for the comments! I was actually already on the fence about "communication" vs. "digital communication," chose the former only to have symmetry with "computation"

The way I think about it is that Bitcoin is a computer that runs one specific program (checking validity, maintaining the UTXO set, etc.)

Ethereum is also a compute that runs one program, but it runs the universal program (i.e., a program that is capable of executing any other program when the latter is supplied as input)

I.e., the "Bitcoin OS" is very specific, while the "Ethereum OS"  resembles the OSes that we're accustomed to

Personally, I feel strongly about emphasizing the "blockchain = computer" analogy as opposed to "blockchain = database." (Reaonable people can disagree on this.)