Thank you, Dr. Kuris. And thank you to the CCS faculty and
staff for asking me to speak here today. It really is an honor that, when
I sat out there thirty years ago, I never could have imagined.
But I really want to speak to the students, to all of you. After all,
you're who CCS is all about.
I guess I'm supposed to talk to you about current events, about the
state of the world and the challenges of government in the new millennium.
But you're not going to be politicians, so I don't want to talk
to you about that. Or I'm supposed to talk to you about the conflicts in
the world, in the great geopolitical juggernauts that wage war and decide
on the boundaries of nations. But you're not going to be generals,
so I don't want to talk to you about that.
You are more important than that. More important than the politicians
and the generals. You are the people who will create the future,
and creation is the point of everything - to create something that has
never existed before
It is no accident that art, and music, and literature, and mathematics,
and physics, and chemistry, and biology, and computer science, ended up
here in Creative Studies. They ended up here by design. Because they are
the same thing. Because the ability to create new things in art and the
ability to create new things in mathematics are the same thing.
And your ability to create new things means that you are the most important
people in the world.
So I want to speak to you. And I want to tell you just one thing today.
I want to tell you what it takes to change the world.
When I got out of graduate school and started working at IBM Research,
I thought the world worked like this. Clever people had good ideas and
turned them into scientific papers, or paintings, or concertos. Other people
recognized this goodness and picked them up, and ... well, stuff happened.
That was it. That's how good ideas changed the world.
That turns out to be completely wrong. Completely wrong. Do you
know how it really works? The way it really works is that clever people
have good ideas and turn them into scientific papers, or paintings, or
concertos. Then everyone else tells them that what they're doing is impossible,
or impractical, or irrelevant, or wrong.
And at that point, most clever people stop. They decide they're done.
They've published their paper, they've finished their painting, they've
completed their concerto. And almost always, nothing happens after that.
This is the path to cloistered obscurity. And if that's what you want,
it's a pretty easy path.
You've all experienced that lucid moment of creation. You're writing
a narrative and, suddenly, it starts to write itself, and it's all you
can do to type fast enough to keep up. Or you're struggling with a theorem
and, all of a sudden, you can see the whole thing laid out, from beginning
to end, like a detailed map of a beautiful, unexplored land. And you know
how to get all the way from one end to the other.
How fortunate you are! Most people never get to experience that, never
get to see the face of god. You do. And more. Some of you will know, in
your creative visions, the mind of god.
But that incredible feeling of insight, that amazing experience of creation
- is not enough. It is not enough if you want your ideas to change the
world.
So what does it take? You have to be right, of course, in your
intuition about what will work and what will be important. And you have
to be visionary. That means you have to be really good, and really insightful,
and extremely knowledgeable. But, since you're sitting here today, I assume
you're really good, and at least on your way to being really insightful
and knowledgeable. (Don't kid yourselves. You're not there yet! But you
will be.) Even if you're all that, it's not enough.
What it takes to change the world - and the thing that will distinguish
you in your career - is not intelligence. There are lots of smart
people in the world. It's not talent. Plenty of people are more talented
that you. What it takes - and what will distinguish you - is stubbornness,
your refusal to give up on your vision - on your dream - when everyone
tells you it's impossible, or impractical, or irrelevant, or wrong. You
will have to work with people who can't possibly do what you do. You will
have to do their jobs for them. You will have to be willing for them to
forget that it was your idea. You will have to make them think it was their
idea in the first place. You will have to win their hearts as well as their
minds. You will have to do whatever it takes to champion your creative
vision.
You must become a passionate, dedicated champion of your own
creative vision. If you do not, your vision will die. And that's
the truth. "Why me?" you ask. "I came up with the vision. Isn't that enough?
Why do I have to be its champion too?" Don't you get it? That is
why. No one cares as much about your vision as you do. In
fact, in the beginning, no one will care at all about your vision
except
you. And if you do not step up to being its champion, it
will die.
What will distinguish you is your passion - and your ability - to find
ways around the thousands of roadblocks that people will put in your way.
And if not around them, then over them. And if not over them, then straight
through them.
You know the little red button on IBM ThinkPad keyboards? That TrackPoint
thingie that replaces a mouse? Ted Selker, a friend of mine who's now at
the MIT Media Lab, invented that when he was at IBM Research. He had a
prototype that he showed everybody around the lab, and it worked great.
But it wasn't going anywhere. So Ted flew to Japan - where they made the
keyboards - with a prototype and a sleeping bag. And he told them he wasn't
leaving until they built all their keyboards with his little red button
in them. "No one wants this," they said, so Ted did user studies showing
that they did. "It's not as good as a mouse," they said, so Ted did ergonomic
studies proving it was better. "It'll cost too much," they said, so Ted
worked with the manufacturing engineers to come up with a low cost design.
"All right," they said, "we'll put it in." Then. Then Ted rolled
up his sleeping bag and came home.
Was it Ted's job to do user studies, or ergonomic studies, or manufacturing
redesigns? It didn't matter. Ted's a brilliant guy. But that's not why
his ideas changed the world. His ideas changed the world because he was
stubborn. And passionate, and dedicated, and everything else. But stubborn.
Stubborn.
Eleven years ago, my group at IBM Research was worried about the problem
of computer viruses. We looked into the future and saw that the whole world
would move onto the Internet and that viruses, which were not really a
big deal at the time, would become a global plague as a result. We created
the idea of an Immune System that could automatically protect the world
from viruses. It would find completely new viruses on your PC, send them
to an analysis center where they would be analyzed. A cure would then be
returned, and also distributed to millions of computers around the world.
And this would all happen automatically, without error, and faster than
the virus itself could spread - in just a few minutes from beginning to
end. No one believed we could do it, including some of the people in our
group! After we showed that it was possible, people said the problem would
never get bad enough to need our solution. After viruses became the huge
problem we predicted, people said customers wouldn't buy our solution.
After we brought them customers who were clamoring for it, they said they
didn't have the resources to implement it. So we implemented it ourselves.
There were innumerable opportunities to quit, to say "This is too much
trouble," to say "Fine, we'll go work on something else." Criminey - it
took eleven years! But we were stubborn. We wouldn't give up. We
knew it could work, and we knew it had to work if we were going
to solve the awful problem of Internet viruses. And, right now, a dozen
patents later, a dozen papers later, and hundreds of thousands of lines
of code later, it's protecting millions of people 24 hours a day. It works.
Just like we said it would.
Before I close, I'd like to tell you about a project we're just starting.
It's really very exciting. It's called Autonomic Computing, and the idea
is really simple. Computers are too complicated. You shouldn't have to
set them up, and configure them, and tune them, and upgrade them, and fiddle
around with them when something goes wrong. They should just plain work,
like your refrigerator does. And I'm not just talking about your laptop.
I mean the millions of systems on which the world depends every day. It's
like computing on Star Trek, where you've never seen a systems administrator
or a help desk. Computing that just plain works. It's really different
from the way computing is today.
And you know what? People are telling me that what we're proposing is
impossible, or impractical, or irrelevant, or wrong. And you know what
else? I love it when they do that. I'm stubborn. And that's
how you change the world.
Thank you very much.
