It would be interesting to know how many applicants got interested in Computer Science from watching Stanford's excellent iOS courses on iTunesU.
Additionally, it would be interesting to learn how many students declare Computer Science before they enroll and how many students switch into Computer Science because "all their friends are doing it" now that it's the most popular major.
I'm a current student, and I believe that a major reason behind the skyrocketing enrollments in CS is that the introductory classes are immensely popular and well-organized (disclosure: I TA a couple of those classes). There seems to be an idea in a lot of the other engineering departments that you have to suffer through the introductory classes in order to get to the interesting topics. The Stanford CS classes give people interesting challenges while covering a lot of the basics of CS. Of course there's still a long way to go after that, but it's a start. The second half of the introductory series is pretty rigorous, too, and I've seen at least a handful of interview questions I've been asked pop up in that class.
I don't know how many people were inspired by the iOS class, but it doesn't seem to be super popular on campus. I do know a fair amount of people (myself included) who had never programmed before Stanford and were simply motivated to keep going after the introductory sequence. There's definitely a snowball effect, but it wouldn't happen without a great curriculum.
Why should you care why people got interested in computer science? As long as they're capable of doing it (and if they graduate from a place like Stanford, they probably will be) why should you care about their motivation?
I personally think anything that makes more people interested in technology is "a good thing".
If people pursue a discipline because "the industry is hot", rather than because of genuine interest in the subject or enjoyment of learning / improving, bad things happen to them when the industry inevitably cools down.
I think about the CS majors during the times of the .dom boom, or the architecture majors during the housing/construction boom, and wonder how many students were stuck with a degree that was difficult to find a job with, and were not inherently interested about in the first place.
The approach to problem solving you acquire from any rigorous scientific endeavor will benefit you for the rest of your life. These benefits will probably still apply regardless of whether or not you go on to be a practitioner.
I suspect we can find more than a few data points here.
I think in many ways, CS is a very cerebral job. You really need to like it to be good at it.
that being said, I know several people who were not "nerds" but completely love CS. (actually, they might have become nerds on their path to CS...hmmm...)
Having recently accepted an admission to Stanford as a grad student, I can tell you that Andrew Ng's Machine Learning online class was what inspired me to go back to school.
I was looking to enter a math-heavy CS sub-field, and his class opened my eyes to the potential for broader adoption of AI.
Additionally, it would be interesting to learn how many students declare Computer Science before they enroll and how many students switch into Computer Science because "all their friends are doing it" now that it's the most popular major.