Breakfast Topic: How would you introduce a complete beginner to WoW?

A few of you might know that I'm studying post-graduate anthropology as well as writing for WoW Insider and generally mooching around playing video games and gardening. I've just moved on to the dissertation phase of my studies, and believe it or not, I have received clearance to write my dissertation on WoW! I'm pretty happy about this!

But an obstacle standing in my way is my supervisor. He's very willing and an absolutely lovely man, but has never played a computer game in his life. Being a professor, he's not short of intelligence, but when I started describing WoW to him, I've realized I'd been assuming he had way more prior knowledge. He didn't understand what an avatar was, outside its scientific sense, and certainly didn't seem to be able to wrap his head around the concept of how an MMO works.

So that got me thinking. How would you introduce a complete beginner to WoW? How would you explain it to them, with or without a computer with the game on it in front of you? If you couldn't be in the same room as them, how would you describe it so they understood, assuming their computing ability includes using email and nothing else? Where would you start? How much would you tell them? What would you leave out?

Is this a thinly veiled cry for help? Maybe ...