Serendipity35

It is the season of commencement speeches. I have sat through a few myself this past week. Despite a few decades in academia, I can't really recall ever hearing one that had any lasting impact on me.

It is a tough gig - one I would not want for myself.

At the University of Pennsylvania, Eric Schmidt, Google's chairman and chief executive, told students that rewards will come to those who go out and make mistakes because they take new chances. He also suggested that they will need to turn off their computers and phones "and discover all that is human around us." He recommends they use the live search of the real world and that "Nothing beats holding
the hand of your grandchild as he walks his first steps."

You didn't have to sit through the speech at UPenn, but if you want to check it out on Google's YouTube, the speech is available. With a running time of only 12 minutes (and no hot sun to endure), it is doable. The video doesn't give us a view of the students, but I doubt that they were very different from others I have seen lately - which means a good number of them were using their cell phones while he spoke.