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CMU Professor Randy Pausch's 'Last Lecture'
This is a bit of an unusual story for Slashdot- it's the "Last Lecture" of a professor at CMU who is terminally ill. His early research in VR has benefited everyone and even if you have never heard of Randy Pausch I think this is worth your time. It's a 2 hour long wmv filled with insight, laughs and wisdom from a man who has really done some amazing work. I've been watching it all morning and I think it would really be worth your time if you can spare it to listen to what he has to say. From virtual reality to education to stuffed animals and childhood dreams, there's a lot here worth your time.
Thanks drew for the link. Update: 09/21 15:44 GMT by Z : The link is already a little shakey, so you might want to turn to this cut up YouTube version of the talk instead.
I havent seen the lecture, but the story in some Pittsburgh newspaper (sorry, dont have the link - it appeared on reddit yesterday) is really moving. Amazing, so 'close' to death but still in such good spirits. Sad that i came to know of such a great spirit when i know i wont be hearing more from/about him. Sad indeed.
This is actually the type of story I love to see on Slashdot. A nice break from yet another "YRO" stuff.
because they are worried that anything over 10 minutes is probably a copyright violation....they should at least create some mechanism whereby material that provably doesn't violate copyrights could have more than 10 minutes alloted to it....how you would prove it is another issue entirely, but I would imagine they could implement some type of peer review system.
Monstar L
It was an amazing lecture. If you dare to dream and dare to follow through, then he's the man to emulate.
It's kind of off-topic, but I read some inspirational lecture slides by Randy Pausch about time management a little while ago. In light of his illness, I guess there's two ways to take it: Perhaps time management isn't that important in the end, or perhaps the limited amount of time each of us may have makes it even more important.
(Or, I suppose, the stress related to worrying about time management may affect your health...)
Haha, me too (I was one of Randy's students back when he was at UVa). I didn't get too into Doom, but when the Quake test code came out, many of us spent pretty much every waking hour playing, for several months. In the meantime, we were supposed to be working on an Alice deliverable for SIGGRAPH. I think the turning point for my entire life was a few months before SIGGRAPH, when Randy called a couple of us out for being too much play and not enough work. I went cold turkey, and didn't pick up another video game for 10 years. I firmly believe if he hadn't done that, I'd have accomplished very little professionally, and would be holding down a crappy 9-5 mid-level programming job while thinking forward to what I was going to play on my XBox 360 on any given night. To this day, I can't really get much enjoyment out of a video game, but I think that's a good thing! Randy definitely taught me to pick a prize and keep my eye on it. He used to like to tell me, "John, you're a strong rocket with no fins," that I would never get to the moon and would come crashing back to earth if I didn't focus. I didn't like it at the time, but I needed to hear it. I think about that advice all the time, and it is just as relevant to me today. Randy has always attracted amazing talent and amazing people. The people in that lab were the greatest group of people I ever worked with in many respects. I'm proud they're my friends, and I'm thankful to Randy for providing the environment and putting us together.
Ah, yes, who could forget Randy taking out his frustrations with a VCR by smashing it with a sledge hammer on the first day of class? I definitely credit Randy and that class for getting me to prioritize the end users above almost everybody else.
This was the most valuable lecture I've ever attended. And it's the kind of lecture I can talk about with my girlfriend, with my friends, and with anyone I care about. It's the stuff of life.
This man has lived an amazing life, and no doubt, this gives him the courage and the peace of mind to leave in such a graceful way, in an ultimate act of generosity. "Take a piece of me" he said somewhere at the beginning, when inviting people in the audience to take away his stuffed animals. And I feel I received a piece of him, even though I am thousands of kilometers away from this great person.
If you want your children to persevere in their lives and reach their dreams, show them this lecture (I saw the videos on YouTube), and talk about it with them.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
Actually Zen Buddhist monks live very strict, regimented, structured lives. Espcially those in Japan. They would consider anybody with a tendency to daydream or procrastinate as failing to live "in the moment". One great quote I remember hearing goes, "Don't do nothing. Do nothing." One monk from the non-fiction book "Ambivalent Zen" would pay any bills he received as soon as he received them so that he could better keep his mind clear.
That said, I'd have a hard hard time changing my own daydreaming, procrastinating ways.
Happy people make bad consumers.
I was in the 10th row, or so. The talk was given in the biggest auditorium on campus, with overflow locations in other big rooms watching it onscreen. I have to say that this really was one of the most moving, intense moments I've ever experienced. This was compounded by the sense that it was being shared with thousands of other people laughing, thinking, and occasionally crying together. At the close of his talk he received a standing ovation that did not even begin to wane after what seemed like ten minutes, until Randy Bryant (in my opinion somewhat rudely) brought it to an end. For that hour, all of CMU was on the same page. In the days since then I've had conversations with several people who were there, and my sense is that people will remember the talk and Randy Pausch's message for the rest of their lives. I know I will. Especially since he's a nerdy smartass just like me.