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July 25, 2008
Randy Pausch, RIP
Randy Pausch, professor of Computer Science and creator of the virtual-reality "Alice" project, died today at the age of 47. That wasn't unexpected. Candidly he pointed out this elephant in the room (his pancreatic cancer) when he gave his last lecture, providing life guidance for his three young children, 400 people from the Carnegie Mellon University community, and, soon after, tens of millions of viewers around the world.
That last group included me. Brick walls are there, he said, so we can show how bad we want things. Looking for a job (in academia) at the time, I thought that this was true to reality. It is so much more fitting than the blunt symbolism of the long metal pole erected on the CMU campus, a pole that points into the sky at an angle, with a group of life-size people walking up the pole effortlessly. Still, Pausch's message was equally simple and direct: it was directed at his children.
His lecture on time management may have boosted the sales of big computer screens, and consequently, many people's productivity. For me, it let me understand how valuable time is, and perhaps it got me to try harder to appreciate the moment. No more laptops during (interesting) conference talks... The popular lectures aside, Pausch's "real" and "really virtual" work bridging computer science and the arts had a substantial impact in his field.
Posted by dr at July 25, 2008 4:25 PM