>> graduates, families, alumni, and honoredguests, it is my great pleasure to introduce a leaderwho epitomizes inspiration, innovation, and corporate responsibility,a man who knows there is as much to be gained in the searchingas in the finding: eric schmidt. [clapping] >>schmidt: thank you for that.let me begin by congratulating all of the graduates.it's exciting. it's exciting to be graduating, and i especially want to congratulate theparents. remember that they still need you, and maybe,now they will listen to you.
if you're not sure who i'm talking to,i'm actually talking to both the parents and the students.so, congratulations to everybody. we owe a debt, in my industry, to penn thatis profound. it was in 1946 that the eniac was inventedright here in a basement down the street, and literally,everythingã¢â‚¬â¦ literally, everything that you see, everycomputer, every mobile phone, every device, descends from the principlesthat were invented right here. this really is the center of my world.now, 63 years later, 250 of your alumni work at google.this is most desirable place for us to hire
interns anywhere in the world,and i can tell you that we know the quality of the graduates that i see before meare the best in the world. it is exciting to be a part of this.[clapping] now, when i think aboutã¢â‚¬â¦when i thinkabout penn, i think about the metaphor of resilience,of a culture that works, of a hunger to change. if you think about 20 years ago, when pennwas struggling, and the changes that the people around memade to turn it into the most desirable undergraduate majorfrom a standpoint of high school applications in the country.from the kind of culture that has been built
here,you see that the culture works, and that the combination that you see representedon the stage, that the parents are so proud to have senttheir students to, really has delivered the very best that wecan do here in america. of course, we also have the best cheesesteaksin the world, which is not so bad. when i look at this group, i see the googleand facebook generation. when i was first in this stadium,my track buddies and i got in a station wagon, you remember them,and i drove up here to go to a track and field event with the great marty liquori,and i think about this is almost 40 years
ago.so, we had tang; you have red bull. we programmed computers in a language calledbasic; you, of course, use java. we had vcrs that had an hour of video andcost $700; you use youtube, and you upload things.15 hours of youtube video every minute. we got our news from newspapers. you rememberthem? you get yours from blogs and tweets,and for those of you who do not know what a tweet is,it's not what you here in a zoo. right? we stood in line to buy pong; you stood inline to buy the wiis. we didn't tell people about our most embarrassingmoments in college;
you record them and post them on youtube andfacebook every day, and i am looking forward to watching thesefor the next 30 or 40 years. we used mainframe computers with 300 megabytesof storage to go to the moon 6 times;you use an ipod with 120 gigabytes ã¢â‚¬â€œ that's about 500 times more ã¢â‚¬â€œto get to your next class, which is not that close,because it's an urban campus. now, we thought that friending was a noun;you think of it as a verb. we had phone booths. remember them?you have cell phones. we wore watches. we too pictures with cameras. we navigatedwith maps.
we listened to transistor radios.again, you have a cell phone. [laughter] we thought that the marvels of computer andtechnology would help us improve the world. you agree, and we're both right.so, despite all of these marvels, this is a great time to be graduating.now, you went to college to develop the kind of analytical skills,the analytical thinking skills, to deal with enormous amountsof complex information that you all face for the rest of your life,but i would argue that you have, in many ways, the best opportunity before you, because youare graduating into a tough time. i used my favorite search engine, of course.what did the great depression spur?
well, it spurred rice krispies, twinkies,and the beer can. you would never have gotten through collegewithout these things. [laughter] right? so, it seems to me that, with all ofthe technology and the connectedness that we see, you havean opportunity that's even better, even stronger, than anythingthat i ever faced when i was sitting in the sameseats. you're seeing a situation where,due to the enormous goodwill of people here on the stage and others,we have an opportunity to have everyone in theworld have access to all the world's information.
this has never been possible. why is thisso important? why is ubiquitous information so profound?it's a tremendous equalizer. information is power. people have fought overit. people care a lot about it. it serves as acheck and balance on politicians. if you were a dictator, which, of course,you're not going to be because you're a fine graduate from penn,the first thing you would do was shut off all of the communicationsso that the people couldn't actually talk to each otherand figure out to make the world a better place.information is very, very important.
in fact, the way that you should invade theseoppressive regimes is with information. the citizens will take that informationand turn their societies into better societies. this is going to continue and continue andcontinue. what are we going to do with this vastly morepopular web? well, we're building a contemporaneous andhistorical record that is unparalleled in human history.there are all sorts of interesting possibilities. you'll have megabits of bandwidths to, essentially,every human pair of hands in the world for knowledge,for entertainment, for all of the things that people care about.you could have a face-to-face meeting around
the world,and with automatic translation, you can talk to them,even though they don't speak your language. if you're traveling in mongolia ã¢â‚¬â€œ thoseof you who are graduating and want to take a week off, go to mongolia,and you fall off your motorcycle, you can get medical carewith a doctor who doesn't speak your language because your medical records can be rightthere. this is life-changing, life-saving, life-fundamental.imagine a situation happening very soon where all of the world's information will be translatedinto all the other languages, so we can find out what everybody really thinksand we can develop a new insight into what
they care about,and they can with us. in the next 10 years, it will be possibleto have the equivalent of ipods in your purse or onyour belt with 85 years of video, which means, if it'sgiven to you at birth, you're going to be frustrated the whole time.you'll never be done watching all of the videos. that's how profound this technological revolutionis. you could ask google the most important questionslike, "where are my car keys, after all?" because,all of a sudden, we'll know where everything is, and we canmake that available.
computers are good at some things,and they're particularly good at these sorts of things.we can detect flu outbreaks, because we can watch what people are doing quicker.we can do things that--here's another example. what i really want is, while i'm typing apaper, i want the computer to tell me what i shouldhave been writing instead. wouldn't that have been useful?another product that we have suggested, but has not been built yet,is the paper lengthening project. it adds 10% to every paper, and it's recursive.it would have been very useful. the point is that the computers really canhelp you,
even, now that you don't need it anymore,if you're in college. so, if you think about mobile phones as ametaphor, as an extension of you, with image-recognition,avatars, and all of the technologies that are coming,you can see that the ability for us to make ourlives even more powerful is all right before us.so what should you do right now, then? well, you should start by listening to georgebernard shaw, who said that all progress depends on theunreasonable man. graduation gives you the courage to be unreasonable.don't bother to have a plan. instead, let's
have some luck.success is really about being ready for the good opportunities to come before you.it's not to have a detailed plan of what everything that you're going to do.you can't plan innovation or inspiration, but you can be ready for it,and when you see it, you can jump on it, and you can make a difference,as many of the people here today have already done.the important point here is that, if you forego your plan, you also then haveto forego fear. in many ways, for the last 4 years, and maybein high school as well, you have been penalized for making mistakes.from now on, the rewards will gravitate to
those who make mistakesand learn from them, as the president said. so, stop right now.take a minute, and think of something completely new,and go work on that. take that as your challenge. take that asyour opportunity. whatever you care the most about.so, how should you do it? how should you behave? well, do it in a group. it's much more funanyway. none of us is as smart as all of us.universities now are good at teaching you how to work with other people.it's no longer the lone light sitting in the lab.it's a team, and you can see twitter as an
example,as a form, of social intelligence. use it. find a network of people who careabout you and so forth and so on. i mean, you can imagine watson and crick,who discovered the structure of dna, did it at a university.so, you can imagine, today, there are 2 people that probably meet on facebook at a university,and they're going to say to each other, "well, what are you up to right now?""oh, i'm finding the secret of life. then, i'm off to a pub. lol"[laughter] it's okay. do it together.amidst all of this, some truths emerge. leadership and personality matter a lot.intelligence, education, and analytical reasoning
matter.trust matters. in a network world, trust is the most important currency,which brings me to my final question. what is, in fact, the meaning of life?in a world where everything is remembered andeverything is kept forever--the world you are in--you need to live for the future and the things that you really, really care about.so, what are those things? in order to know that, i hate to say it, you'regoing to have to turn off your computer. you're actually going to have to turn offyour phone and discover all that is human around us.you'll find that people really are the same
all around the world.they really do care about the same things. you'll find that curiosity and enthusiasmand passion are contagious. i see it with the students. i see it withthe faculty. i see it with the trustees and the presidenthere. it's contagious. make it happen. take it with you.you'll find that nothing beats holding the hand of your grandchild,as he walks his first steps. you'll find that a mind set in its ways isa life wasted. don't do it. you'll find that the resilience of the humanbeing and the human spirit is amazing.you'll find, today, that the best chance that
you will ever haveis right now to start being unreasonable, but when you do--listen to me--be nice to your parents and true to your school.good luck, and thank you very much. [clapping]thank you.
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