The last lecture (10 page)

E
NABLING THE
dreams of others can be done on several different scales. You can do it one on one, the way I worked with Tommy, the
Star Wars
dreamer. You can do it with fifty or a hundred people at a time, the way we did in the Building Virtual Worlds class or at the ETC. And, if you have large ambitions and a measure of chutzpah, you can attempt to do it on a grand scale, trying to enable the dreams of millions of people.

I’d like to think that’s the story of Alice, the Carnegie Mellon software teaching tool I was lucky enough to help develop. Alice allows introductory computing students—and anyone else, young or old—to easily create animations for telling a story, playing an interactive game or making a video. It uses 3-D graphics and drag-and-drop techniques to give users a more engaging, less frustrating first programming experience. Alice is offered free as a public service by Carnegie Mellon, and more than a million people have downloaded it. In the years ahead, usage is expected to soar.

To me, Alice is infinitely scalable. It’s scalable to the point where I can picture tens of millions of kids using it to chase their dreams.

From the time we started Alice in the early 1990s, I’ve loved that it teaches computer programming by use of the head fake. Remember the head fake? That’s when you teach somebody something by having them think they’re learning something else. So students think they’re using Alice to make movies or create video games. The head fake is that they’re actually learning how to become computer programmers.

Walt Disney’s dream for Disney World was that it would never be finished. He wanted it to keep growing and changing forever. In the same way, I am thrilled that future versions of Alice now being developed by my colleagues will be even better than what we’ve done in the past. In upcoming iterations, people will think they’re writing movie scripts, but they’ll actually be learning the Java programming language. And, thanks to my pal Steve Seabolt at Electronic Arts, we’ve gotten the OK to use characters from the bestselling personal computer video game in history, “The Sims.” How cool is that?

I know the project is in terrific hands. Alice’s lead designer is Dennis Cosgrove, who was a student of mine at the University of Virginia. Another former student who became a colleague is Caitlin Kelleher. She looked at “Alice” in its earliest stages and said to me, “I know this makes programming easier, but why is it fun?” I replied: “Well, I’m a compulsive male and I like to make little toy soldiers move around on my command, and that’s fun.”

So Caitlin wondered how Alice could be made just as fun for girls, and figured storytelling was the secret to getting them interested. For her PhD dissertation, she built a system called “Storytelling Alice.”

Now a computer science professor at Washington University in St. Louis, Caitlin (oops, I mean, Dr. Kelleher) is developing new systems that revolutionize how young girls get their first programming experiences. She demonstrated that if it is presented as a storytelling activity, girls become perfectly willing to learn how to write software. In fact, they love it. It’s also worth noting that it in no way turns the boys off. Everybody loves telling stories. It’s one of the truly universal things about our species. So in my mind, Caitlin wins the All-Time Best Head-Fake Award.

In my last lecture, I mentioned that I now have a better understanding of the story of Moses, and how he got to see the Promised Land but never got to set foot in it. I feel that way about all the successes ahead for Alice.

I wanted my lecture to be a call to my colleagues and students to go on without me, and to know I have confidence that they will do great things. (You can keep tabs on their progress at www.alice.org.)

Through Alice, millions of kids are going to have incredible fun while learning something hard. They’ll develop skills that could help them achieve their dreams. If I have to die, I am comforted by having Alice as a professional legacy.

So it’s OK that I won’t set foot in the Promised Land. It’s still a wonderful sight.

M
EN FIRST
walked on the moon during the summer of 1969, when I was eight years old. I knew then that pretty much anything was possible. It was as if all of us, all over the world, had been given permission to dream big dreams.

I was at camp that summer, and after the lunar module landed, all of us were brought to the main farm house, where a television was set up. The astronauts were taking a long time getting organized before they could climb down the ladder and walk on the lunar surface. I understood. They had a lot of gear, a lot of details to attend to. I was patient.

But the people running the camp kept looking at their watches. It was already after eleven. Eventually, while smart decisions were being made on the moon, a dumb one was made here on Earth. It had gotten too late. All of us kids were sent back to our tents to go to sleep.

I was completely peeved at the camp directors. The thought in my head was this: “My species has gotten off of our planet and landed in a new world for the first time, and you people think bedtime matters?”

But when I got home a few weeks later, I learned that my dad had taken a photo of our TV set the second Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon. He had preserved the moment for me, knowing it could help trigger big dreams. We still have that photo in a scrapbook.

I understand the arguments about how the billions of dollars spent to put men on the moon could have been used to fight poverty and hunger on Earth. But, look, I’m a scientist who sees inspiration as the ultimate tool for doing good.

The moon landing on our television, courtesy of my father.

When you use money to fight poverty, it can be of great value, but too often, you’re working at the margins. When you’re putting people on the moon, you’re inspiring all of us to achieve the maximum of human potential, which is how our greatest problems will eventually be solved.

Give yourself permission to dream. Fuel your kids’ dreams, too. Once in a while, that might even mean letting them stay up past their bedtimes.

I
’LL TAKE
an earnest person over a hip person every time, because hip is short-term. Earnest is long-term.

Earnestness is highly underestimated. It comes from the core, while hip is trying to impress you with the surface.

“Hip” people love parodies. But there’s no such thing as a timeless parody, is there? I have more respect for the earnest guy who does something that can last for generations, and that hip people feel the
need
to parody.

When I think of someone who is earnest, I think of a Boy Scout who works hard and becomes an Eagle Scout. When I was interviewing people to work for me, and I came upon a candidate who had been an Eagle Scout, I’d almost always try to hire him. I knew there had to be an earnestness about him that outweighed any superficial urges toward hipness.

Think about it. Becoming an Eagle Scout is just about the only thing you can put on your resume at age fifty that you did at age fourteen—and it still impresses. (Despite my efforts at earnestness, I never did make it to Eagle Scout.)

My wardrobe hasn’t changed.

Fashion, by the way, is commerce masquerading as hip. I’m not at all interested in fashion, which is why I rarely buy new clothes. The fact that fashion goes out of fashion and then comes back into fashion based solely on what a few people somewhere think they can sell, well to me, that’s insanity.

My parents taught me: You buy new clothes when your old clothes wear out. Anyone who saw what I wore to my last lecture knows this is advice I live by!

My wardrobe is far from hip. It’s kind of earnest. It’s going to carry me through just fine.

M
Y MOTHER
always calls me “Randolph.”

She was raised on a small dairy farm in Virginia during the Depression, wondering if there’d be enough food for dinner. She picked “Randolph” because it felt like the name some classy Virginian might have. And that may be why I rejected it and abhorred it. Who wants a name like that?

And yet my mother kept at it. As a teen, I confronted her. “Do you really believe your right to name me supersedes my right to have my own identity?”

“Yes, Randolph, I do,” she said.

Well, at least we knew where we stood!

By the time I got to college, I had had enough. She’d send me mail addressed to “Randolph Pausch.” I’d scrawl “no such person at this address” on the envelope, and send the letters back unopened.

In a great act of compromise, my mom began addressing letters to “R. Pausch.” Those, I’d open. But then, when we’d talk on the phone, she’d revert back to old form. “Randolph, did you get our letter?”

Now, all these years later, I’ve given up. I am so appreciative of my mother on so many fronts that if she wants to burden me with an unnecessary “olph” whenever she’s around, I’m more than happy put up with it. Life’s too short.

Mom and me, at the beach.

Somehow, with the passage of time, and the deadlines that life imposes, surrendering became the right thing to do.

W
HEN I
was in grad school, I developed the habit of tipping back in my chair at the dining-room table. I would do it whenever I visited my parents’ house, and my mother would constantly reprimand me. “Randolph, you are going to break that chair!” she’d say.

I liked leaning back in the chair. It felt comfortable. And the chair seemed to handle itself on two legs just fine. So, meal after meal after meal, I’d lean back and she’d reprimand.

One day, my mother said, “Stop leaning back in that chair. I’m not going to tell you again!”

Now
that
sounded like something I could sign up for. So I suggested we create a contract—a parent/child agreement in writing. If I broke the chair, I’d have to pay to replace not
just
the chair…but, as an added inducement, the entire dining-room set. (Replacing an individual chair on a twenty-year-old set would be impossible.) But, until I actually broke the chair, no lectures from Mom.

Certainly my mother was right; I was putting stress on the chair legs. But both of us decided that this agreement was a way to avoid arguments. I was acknowledging my responsibility in case there was damage. She was in the position of being able to say “You should always listen to your mother” if one of the chair legs cracked.

The chair has never broken. And whenever I visit her house and lean backward, the agreement still stands. There’s not a cross word. In fact, the whole dynamic has changed. I won’t say Mom has gone as far as to actually
encourage
me to lean back. But I do think she has long had her eye on a new dining-room set.