Innovative Voice in Tech Passes: Randy Pausch, 1960-2008

Early Friday, virtual reality pioneer, Randy Pausch, 47, died of pancreatic cancer. You may have seen Pausch's popular "Last Lecture" at Carnegie Mellon on YouTube. It was delivered to a packed auditorium of 500 students, friends and faculty members. At the time (Sept. 18, 2007) Pausch believed he had less than six months to live. The lecture quickly became a viral-video hit and as of this writing has been viewed more than 3.5 million times, so far. In May, Time magazine listed Pausch as one of the world's top-100 Most Influential People.

Pausch was a best-selling author and professor of Computer Science, Human-Computer Interaction and Design at Pittsburgh's Carnegie Mellon University. He was co-founder of CMU's Entertainment Technology Center, and founder of the Building Virtual Worlds course, which he taught for 10 years. He authored or co-authored five books and more than 70 articles, and founded the ALICE software project. He completed sabbaticals at Walt Disney and Electronic Arts, consulted with Google, and received numerous awards and fellowships.

Carnegie Mellon University has a very nice tribute to Pausch that can be found here.

Master of the Head Fake

In 2006, he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and underwent aggressive treatment, but in August 2007, the cancer had metastasized to his liver and spleen. Doctors gave Pausch up to six months to live. This past May, doctors discovered further metastases in his lymph nodes.

Pausch's last lecture at CMU was on "Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams" is one which he is best known for. Posted on YouTube, it has been seen millions of times and has been made into a book titled "The Last Lecture" which was translated into 30 languages.

In "Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams" he shared his own boyhood dreams which included wanting to float in zero gravity, meet his boyhood idol, Captain Kirk, play in the NFL, and to become a Disney Imaginer.

Pausch achieve most of his boyhood dreams. Some sooner than others. He did float in zero gravity; he did eventually become a Disney Imagineer. He did play football but not for the NFL.

Pausch reflected, he he learned more from failing to achieve the goal of playing football than he did from other dreams he did realize.

When he was nine years old, he had a football coach named Jim Graham that Pausch described as a big guy from the "old school." Pausch explained that Coach Graham didn't bring a football to practice. When one of the kids at practice asked Graham, "Why didn't you bring a football?" Graham answered. "How many football players are on the field at one time? 22. Yep. How many are touching the football? One. Yep. We are going to work on what the others are doing, those other players who are not touching the football."

Pausch:
"We want our kids to learn football, but we send our kids to learn more important things ? teamwork, sportsmanship, perseverance. These kinds of head fake learning things are much more important. Keep your eye out for them. They are everywhere."

The "best way to teach someone something is for them to think they are learning something else." The head fake.

So, when you are on your iPhone, your iPod or your laptop, or maybe even playing GTA, remember this virtual reality pioneer's underlying message: Keep it real.

CREDIT Kathryn Esplin

Esplin is a tech freelance writer in Massachusetts.

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