>>COHEN: Ladies and gentleman, Dr Eric Schmidt.
>>SCHMIDT: Thank you very much, President Cohen.
I want to start by congratulating all the graduates, and I want to especially congratulate
the parents. For the parents, remember that the students
will still need you, and maybe now, they'll listen to you now that they've graduated.
When I see computers and mobile phones, and I want you to look and think about--
Everybody here has a mobile phone with you and a camera--
I want you to remember that everything you touch was probably invented by computer scientists
that came from Carnegie Mellon. This startling and surprising statistic is
actually true, that in the 60s, much of what we know in modern computing was invented here
by giants in my field. I, as a young person roughly your age, worked
with people who seemed much older than me, in their 30s, who had come through that program,
who ultimately came to develop the networks, the workstations, the personal computers,
and the mobile computing that we use today. I was so impressed by what Carnegie Mellon
had done for computer science that not only did I become a trustee for a while,
but Google now has one of its very top-ranked development centers here right on campus,
where we have, in many cases, the very best graduates and employees that
we could possibly get. These are people who do amazing things as
part of our underlying system, and they occasionally do interesting things, as well, that you wouldn't
expect. They just released a product called Star Droid.
You take your mobile phone, you turn it towards the sky, and it tells you what the stars are
doing. How neat is that?
Why is Carnegie Mellon the place that is so exceptional?
I think it's because the culture is a culture of getting things done.
It's not a purely theoretical culture. It's not a purely tactical culture.
It's a culture that's about accomplishing things for the world.
That is true regardless of the division, the department, the college, the institute that
you are part of and that you graduated from. When I think about you all, I think about
you as the Facebook and the Google generation, the first generation that really grew up with
the internet. When I grew up, we had Tang. You had Red Bull.
We used a programming language called BASIC. You all use JAVA.
We had VCRs that held 1/2-hour of video that cost $700, and you all can upload 15 hours
of video into YouTube every minute. We got our news from newspapers.
You get yours from blogs and tweets. For those of you who don't know, that's not
what you hear in zoos. We stood in line to buy Pong. You stood in
line to buy Wii's. We just didn't tell anyone about our most
embarrassing moments. You record them and post them to Facebook
and YouTube every day.
[laughter]
I am so happy that my record of my mis-achievements is not around for posterity.
I am looking forward to yours being there for many, many years.
[laughter]
Did you know that we used mainframe computers with 300 megabytes of storage to go to the
moon 6 times? Your iPods, 120 gigabytes, have 500 times
more just to get you to your next class.
[laughter]
We thought "friend" is a noun. You think it's a verb.
[laughter]
We had phone booths. Anyone seen a phone booth recently?
We wore watches, took pictures with cameras, navigated with maps, and listened to transistor
radios. You have a cell phone.
[laughter]
We thought that the marvels of computers and technology--again, largely invented here--would
change the world. You agree, and we're both right.
Why did you all go to college? To develop the kind of analytical thinking
skills, confronting the spin, the crazy choices of information that you'll have going forward.
I would argue that you have the opportunity to be the greatest generation, because right
in front of you now are tools that we never had that you can take advantage of.
You sit there and you say, "This guy must be mad," and maybe that's a little true.
In front of us, you say, "The world's falling apart. We have this recession," and so forth.
I did some research, using my favorite search engine, of course, and the Great Depression
spurred some incredible innovations: Rice Krispies, Twinkies, and the beer can.
You would never have gotten through college without these three things.
So, good things happen in recessions. Why is ubiquitous information so important?
Why is it so important that we have access to all these things?
It's a tremendous equalizer. In our lifetimes--literally, certainly, in
yours, if not mine--essentially, every human being on the planet will have access to every
piece of information known on the planet. This is a remarkable achievement.
God knows what these people will do, and it's going to be pretty amazing.
Information serves as a check and balance on politicians.
If you were a dictator, which you're not going to be, because you're fine graduates of Carnegie
Mellon,
[laughter]
the first thing you would do is shut off all communications to make sure that people couldn't
take advantage of knowledge and overthrow you.
What you do now with oppressive regimes and people who do evil things is you attack them
with information. You get that information out there.
You use the tools and technologies that all of us have worked so hard on to make the world
a better place. What can we do with a vastly more powerful
web, the web of information that comprises all of what we know?
You could obviously have face-to-face meetings with colleagues around the world, but more
importantly, now, we can do dynamic translations so we
can translate between languages, so you can actually understand.
If you're traveling in Mongolia and you're on a motorcycle--many of you will do this
right after you graduate, to get away--and you have an accident,
you can actually have a doctor consult with you around the world, and they can translate
and provide you the healthcare that you need. These are very real wins.
But most importantly, you can ask Google the most important questions that bother you,
like, "Where are my car keys, after all?" Computers are really good at remembering some
things. In the new world, much of this, again, technology
that was invented here, we know where everything can be.
We can find them. We can keep track of things. We can make your lives more functional.
But you can also ask questions like, "What's the solution going to be to global warming?
Where's the vaccine for flu pandemics?" And you thought Finals was hard.
Think about the challenges before you. What should you do now?
It seems to me that you should think about George Bernard Shaw, who said that all progress
depends on reasonable man. Don't bother to have a plan at all.
All that stuff about plan, throw that out. It seems to me that it's all about opportunity
and make your own luck. You study the most successful people.
They work hard, and they take advantage of opportunities that come that they don't know
are going to happen to them. You cannot plan innovation. You cannot plan
invention. All you can do is try very hard to be in the
right place and be ready. The pacemaker, for example, was invented 70
years, in one form or another, before it was applied.
It was applied to this one poor fellow, and 25 pacemakers later he was still alive.
But the point is that he wouldn't have been at all, had the pacemaker not had been invented.
You never know, and life is like that. This is a John Lennon quote: "Life is what
happens to you while you're busy making other plans."
So, live it with its fullness. If you live your life and forego your plan,
you can also forego fear. In some sense, you've been penalized for making
mistakes, historically. Now, you have to go out and make them, because
mistakes allow you to learn and to innovate and try new things.
That's a culture of innovation that is going to create the next great opportunities for
all of you as you come to run and rule the world and the rest of us retire.
What should you do? How should you behave? Do things in a group. Don't do things by yourself.
Groups are stronger. Groups are faster. None of us is smart as all of us.
You can use Twitter as a form of social intelligence and its successors as well.
Watson and Crick, who discovered the structure of DNA, met at a university.
Today, they would meet on Facebook, and they would find each other, and they would do these
amazing things. They'd say to each other, "What are you doing
right?" "Oh, finding the secret of life, then off
to a pub. LOL."
[laughter]
It's okay. I would tell you that, amidst all this change,
some truths endure. Leadership and personality matter.
We saw that from our student speaker. Intelligence, education, and analytical reasoning
matter. Trust matters in a networked world.
Trust is your most important currency, which brings me to my final question, "What is the
meaning of life?" The correct question to ask at a university.
In a world where everything is remembered and kept forever, the world you are graduating
into, you should live for the future and the things that you really care about.
Don't live in the past. Live in the future. What are those things?
To figure this out, you need to actually turn off your computer. I know this is difficult.
You need to turn off your phone. You need to actually look at the people who
are near you and around you and decide that it is humans who, ultimately, are the most
important thing to us, not the other aspects. You'll find out, I hope, what I believe very
strongly, that people all around us of every race, color, and viewpoint, fundamentally
want the same things. They want a great and safe world, and they
want prosperity and peace among all of us. You'll find that curiosity, enthusiasm, and
passion are very contagious. I want you to show that because you have it
by virtue of being here. You'll find that nothing beats holding the
hand of your grandchild as he takes his first step.
You'll find that a mindset, in its own ways, set in its ways, locked down, is a mind and
a life wasted. Don't do it. You'll find that the resilience in the human
spirit is amazing. It's what got us through World War 1 and World
War 2, and it will get us through our current challenges just fine.
You'll find today is the best chance you have to start being unreasonable, to demand excellence,
to drive change, to make everything happen. But when you do, speaking to the graduates,
always remember to be nice to your parents and true to your school.
Thank you very much, and congratulations.
[applause]