The last lecture (4 page)

I
LIVE IN
the computer age and I love it here! I have long embraced pixels, multi-screen work stations and the information superhighway. I really can picture a paperless world.

And yet, I grew up in a very different place.

When I was born in 1960, paper was where great knowledge was recorded. In my house, all through the 1960s and 1970s, our family worshipped the World Book Encyclopedia—the photos, the maps, the flags of different countries, the handy sidebars revealing each state’s population, motto and average elevation.

I didn’t read every word of every volume of the World Book, but I gave it a shot. I was fascinated by how it all came together. Who wrote that section on the aardvark? How that must have been, to have the World Book editors call and say, “You know aardvarks better than anyone. Would you write an entry for us?” Then there was the Z volume. Who was the person deemed enough of a Zulu expert to create that entry? Was he or she a Zulu?

My parents were frugal. Unlike many Americans, they would never buy anything for the purposes of impressing other people, or as any kind of luxury for themselves. But they happily bought the World Book, spending a princely sum at the time, because by doing so, they were giving the gift of knowledge to me and my sister. They also ordered the annual companion volumes. Each year, a new volume of breakthroughs and current events would arrive—labeled 1970, 1971, 1972, 1973—and I couldn’t wait to read them. These annual volumes came with stickers, referencing entries in the original, alphabetical World Books. My job was to attach those stickers on the appropriate pages, and I took that responsibility seriously. I was helping to chronicle history and science for anyone who opened those encyclopedias in the future.

Given how I cherished the World Book, one of my childhood dreams was to be a contributor. But it’s not like you can call World Book headquarters in Chicago and suggest yourself. The World Book has to find you.

A few years ago, believe it or not, the call finally came.

It turned out that somehow, my career up to that time had turned me into exactly the sort of expert that World Book felt comfortable badgering. They didn’t think I was the most important virtual reality expert in the world. That person was too busy for them to approach. But me, I was in that midrange level—just respectable enough…but not so famous that I’d turn them down.

“Would you like to write our new entry on virtual reality?” they asked.

I couldn’t tell them that I’d been waiting all my life for this call. All I could say was, “Yes, of course!” I wrote the entry. And I included a photo of my student Caitlin Kelleher wearing a virtual reality headset.

No editor ever questioned what I wrote, but I assume that’s the World Book way. They pick an expert and trust that the expert won’t abuse the privilege.

I have not bought the latest set of World Books. In fact, having been selected to be an author in the World Book, I now believe that Wikipedia is a perfectly fine source for your information, because I know what the quality control is for real encyclopedias. But sometimes when I’m in a library with the kids, I still can’t resist looking under “V” (“Virtual Reality” by yours truly) and letting them have a look. Their dad made it.

L
IKE COUNTLESS
American nerds born in 1960, I spent part of my childhood dreaming of being Captain James T. Kirk, commander of the Starship
Enterprise
. I didn’t see myself as Captain Pausch. I imagined a world where I actually got to
be
Captain Kirk.

For ambitious young boys with a scientific bent, there could be no greater role model than James T. Kirk of
Star Trek
. In fact, I seriously believe that I became a better teacher and colleague—maybe even a better husband—by watching Kirk run the
Enterprise
.

Think about it. If you’ve seen the TV show, you know that Kirk was not the smartest guy on the ship. Mr. Spock, his first officer, was the always-logical intellect on board. Dr. McCoy had all the medical knowledge available to mankind in the 2260s. Scotty was the chief engineer, who had the technical know-how to keep that ship running, even when it was under attack by aliens.

So what was Kirk’s skill set? Why did he get to climb on board the
Enterprise
and run it?

The answer: There is this skill set called “leadership.”

I learned so much by watching this guy in action. He was the distilled essence of the dynamic manager, a guy who knew how to delegate, had the passion to inspire, and looked good in what he wore to work. He never professed to have skills greater than his subordinates. He acknowledged that they knew what they were doing in their domains. But he established the vision, the tone. He was in charge of morale. On top of that, Kirk had the romantic chops to woo women in every galaxy he visited. Picture me at home watching TV, a ten-year-old in glasses. Every time Kirk showed up on the screen he was like a Greek god to me.

And he had the coolest damn toys! When I was a kid, I thought it was fascinating that he could be on some planet and he had this thing—this Star Trek communicator device—that let him talk to people back on the ship. I now walk around with one in my pocket. Who remembers that it was Kirk who introduced us to the cell phone?

A few years ago, I got a call (on my communicator device) from a Pittsburgh author named Chip Walter. He was co-writing a book with William Shatner (a.k.a. Kirk) about how scientific breakthroughs first imagined on
Star Trek
foreshadowed today’s technological advancements. Captain Kirk wanted to visit my virtual reality lab at Carnegie Mellon.

Granted, my childhood dream was to
be
Kirk. But I still considered it a dream realized when Shatner showed up. It’s cool to meet your boyhood idol, but it’s almost indescribably cooler when he comes to you to see cool stuff you’re doing in your lab.

My students and I worked around the clock to build a virtual reality world that resembled the bridge of the Enterprise. When Shatner arrived, we put this bulky “head-mounted display” on him. It had a screen inside, and as he turned his head, he could immerse himself in 360-degree images of his old ship. “Wow, you even have the turbolift doors,” he said. And we had a surprise for him, too: red-alert sirens. Without missing a beat, he barked, “We’re under attack!”

Shatner stayed for three hours and asked tons of questions. A colleague later said to me: “He just kept asking and asking. He doesn’t seem to get it.”

But I was hugely impressed. Kirk, I mean, Shatner, was the ultimate example of a man who knew what he didn’t know, was perfectly willing to admit it, and didn’t want to leave until he understood. That’s heroic to me. I wish every grad student had that attitude.

During my cancer treatment, when I was told that only 4 percent of pancreatic cancer patients live five years, a line from the Star Trek movie
The Wrath of Khan
came into my head. In the film, Starfleet cadets are faced with a simulated training scenario where, no matter what they do, their entire crew is killed. The film explains that when Kirk was a cadet, he reprogrammed the simulation because “he didn’t believe in the no-win scenario.”

Over the years, some of my sophisticated academic colleagues have turned up their noses at my Star Trek infatuation. But from the start, it has never failed to stand me in good stead.

After Shatner learned of my diagnosis, he sent me a photo of himself as Kirk. On it he wrote: “I don’t believe in the no-win scenario.”

O
NE OF
my earliest childhood dreams was to be the coolest guy at any amusement park or carnival I visited. I always knew exactly how that kind of coolness was achieved.

The coolest guy was easy to spot: He was the one walking around with the largest stuffed animal. As a kid, I’d see some guy off in the distance with his head and body mostly hidden by an enormous stuffed animal. It didn’t matter if he was a buffed-up Adonis, or if he was some nerd who couldn’t get his arms around it. If he had the biggest stuffed animal, then he was the coolest guy at the carnival.

My dad subscribed to the same belief. He felt naked on a Ferris wheel if he didn’t have a huge, newly won bear or ape on his hip. Given the competitiveness in our family, midway games became a battle. Which one of us could capture the largest beast in the Stuffed Animal Kingdom?

Have you ever walked around a carnival with a giant stuffed animal? Have you ever watched how people look at you and envy you? Have you ever used a stuffed animal to woo a woman? I have…and I married her!

Giant stuffed animals have played a role in my life from the start. There was that time when I was three years old and my sister was five. We were in a store’s toy department, and my father said he’d buy us any one item if we could agree on it and share it. We looked around and around, and eventually we looked up and saw, on the highest shelf, a giant stuffed rabbit.

“We’ll take that!” my sister said.

It was probably the most expensive item in the toy department. But my father was a man of his word. And so he bought it for us. He likely figured it was a good investment. A home could always use another giant stuffed animal.

As I reached adulthood and kept showing up with more and bigger stuffed animals, my father suspected that I was paying people off. He assumed that I was waiting for winners over by the squirt guns, and then slipping a fifty to some guy who didn’t realize how a giant stuffed animal could change the world’s perception of him. But I never paid for a stuffed animal.

And I never cheated.

OK, I admit that I leaned. That’s the only way to do it at the ring toss. I am a leaner, but I am not a cheater.

I did, however, do a lot of my winning out of view of my family. And I know that increased suspicions. But I found the best way to bag stuffed animals is without the pressure of a family audience. I also didn’t want anyone to know just how long it took me to be successful. Tenacity is a virtue, but it’s not always crucial for everyone to observe how hard you work at something.

Have you ever walked around a carnival with a giant stuffed animal?

I am prepared now to reveal that there are two secrets to winning giant stuffed animals: long arms and a small amount of discretionary income. I have been blessed in life to have both.

I talked about my stuffed animals at my last lecture, and showed photos of them. I could predict what the tech-savvy cynics were thinking: In this age of digitally manipulated images, maybe those stuffed bears weren’t really in the pictures with me. Or maybe I sweet-talked the actual winners into letting me have my photo taken next to their prizes.

How, in this age of cynicism, could I convince my audience that I’d really won these things? Well, I would show them the actual stuffed animals. And so I had some of my students walk in from the wings of the stage, each carrying a giant stuffed animal I’d won over the years.

I don’t need these trophies anymore. And although I know my wife loved the stuffed bear I’d hung in her office when we were courting, three children later, she doesn’t want an army of them cluttering up our new house. (They were leaking styrofoam beads that were making their way into Chloe’s mouth.)

I knew that if I kept the stuffed animals, someday Jai would be calling Goodwill and saying, “Take them away!”…or worse, feeling she couldn’t! That’s why I had decided: Why don’t I give them to friends?

And so once they were lined up on stage, I announced: “Anybody who would like a piece of me at the end of this, feel free to come up and take a bear; first come, first served.”

The giant stuffed animals all found homes quickly. A few days later, I learned that one of the animals had been taken by a Carnegie Mellon student who, like me, has cancer. After the lecture, she walked up and selected the giant elephant. I love the symbolism of that. She got the elephant in the room.