转载于 http://www.isoblog.cn/u/king/Blog/t-51 视频地址 http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XMjQzMTI0NjA=.html 哈佛大学代理校长Derek Bok介绍毕业典礼主讲人比尔·盖茨出场，一旁观看的则是NBA传奇人物Bill Russell。 Bok校长不忘开玩笑的说，“若你在哈佛能多读完两年才出去，那成就不就更惊人了？”盖茨当年读到大三就退学出去创业，成立了微软。 盖茨上台后，也不忘幽默地回应校长的话：“这一刻我等了30年了，阿爸，我早就跟你说过，我一定会回来拿到学位的。” 不过场面话交代完毕，盖茨马上将话题转到对抗贫穷与爱滋，这是盖茨与妻子Melinda通过他们的基金会（BillMelinda Gates Foundation）所致力改善的目标之一。 盖茨向哈佛毕业生说，各位有责任改善世界不公平之处。“想想你们目前享受到的，大家就能明白世界对各位的期望是什么。” 盖茨与微软首席执行官史蒂夫·鲍尔默（1977年哈佛毕业生）向主办单位致意。鲍尔默跟盖茨两人在哈佛一年级时曾经同寝室。 screen.width*0.7) 在会后记者会上，有记者询问盖茨对于Nicholas Negroponte发起“人人电脑”（One Laptop Per Child）计划的看法。盖茨回答说，这方面的工作都十分令人敬佩，但他的基金会希望以特定的方式来进行。 “若以优先性来说，世界上有许多地方发生许多不公的事情，计算机运算并非这些问题的主因之一。”盖茨表示。 screen.width*0.7) 比尔·盖茨、太太Melinda、父亲William Henry Gates Sr.，与后母Mimi Gardner Gates拍了一张大学毕业生的传统：全家福照片 screen.width*0.7) 下文是比尔·盖茨今年6月7日在哈佛大学毕业典礼上的演讲的翻译。他在其中谈 到了很多事情，包括他的学生时代、他的退学经历、以及他眼中人生最有意义的事情。 President Bok, former President Rudenstine, incoming President Faust, members of the Harvard Corporation and the Board of Overseers, members of the faculty, parents, and especially, the graduates: 尊敬的Bok校长，Rudenstine前校长，即将上任的Faust校长，哈佛集团的各位成员，监管理事会的各位理事，各位老师，各位家长，各位同学： I’ve been waiting more than 30 years to say this: "Dad, I always told you I’d come back and get my degree." 有一句话我等了三十年，现在终于可以说了：“老爸，我总是跟你说，我会回来拿到我的学位的！” I want to thank Harvard for this timely honor. I’ll be changing my job next year … and it will be nice to finally have a college degree on my resume. 我要感谢哈佛大学在这个时候给我这个荣誉。明年，我就要换工作了（注：指从微软公司退休）……我终于可以在简历上写我有一个本科学位，这真是不错啊。 I applaud the graduates today for taking a much more direct route to your degrees. For my part, I’m just happy that the Crimson has called me "Harvard’s most successful dropout." I guess that makes me valedictorian of my own special class … I did the best of everyone who failed. 我为今天在座的各位同学感到高兴，你们拿到学位可比我简单多了。哈佛的校报称我是“哈佛大学历史上最成功的辍学生”。我想这大概使我有资格代表我这一类学生发言……在所有的失败者里，我做得最好。 But I also want to be recognized as the guy who got Steve Ballmer to drop out of business school. I’m a bad influence. That’s why I was invited to speak at your graduation. If I had spoken at your orientation, fewer of you might be here today. 但是，我还要提醒大家，我使得Steve Ballmer（注：微软总经理）也从哈佛商学院退学了。因此，我是个有着恶劣影响力的人。这就是为什么我被邀请来在你们的毕业典礼上演讲。如果我在你们入学欢迎仪式上演讲，那么能够坚持到今天在这里毕业的人也许会少得多吧。 Harvard was just a phenomenal experience for me. Academic life was fascinating. I used to sit in on lots of classes I hadn’t even signed up for. And dorm life was terrific. I lived up at Radcliffe, in Currier House. There were always lots of people in my dorm room late at night discussing things, because everyone knew I didn’t worry about getting up in the morning. That’s how I came to be the leader of the anti-social group. We clung to each other as a way of validating our rejection of all those social people. 对我来说，哈佛的求学经历是一段非凡的经历。校园生活很有趣，我常去旁听我没选修的课。哈佛的课外生活也很棒，我在Radcliffe过着逍遥自在 的日子。每天我的寝室里总有很多人一直待到半夜，讨论着各种事情。因为每个人都知道我从不考虑第二天早起。这使得我变成了校园里那些不安分学生的头头，我们互相粘在一起，做出一种拒绝所有正常学生的姿态。 Radcliffe was a great place to live. There were more women up there, and most of the guys were science-math types. That combination offered me the best odds, if you know what I mean. This is where I learned the sad lesson that improving your odds doesn’t guarantee success. Radcliffe是个过日子的好地方。那里的女生比男生多，而且大多数男生都是理工科的。这种状况为我创造了最好的机会，如果你们明白我的意思。可惜的是，我正是在这里学到了人生中悲伤的一课：机会大，并不等于你就会成功。 One of my biggest memories of Harvard came in January 1975, when I made a call from Currier House to a company in Albuquerque that had begun making the world’s first personal computers. I offered to sell them software. 我在哈佛最难忘的回忆之一，发生在1975年1月。那时，我从宿舍楼里给位于Albuquerque的一家公司打了一个电话，那家公司已经在着手制造世界上第一台个人电脑。我提出想向他们出售软件。 I worried that they would realize I was just a student in a dorm and hang up on me. Instead they said: "We’re not quite ready, come see us in a month," which was a good thing, because we hadn’t written the software yet. From that moment, I worked day and night on this little extra credit project that marked the end of my college education and the beginning of a remarkable journey with Microsoft. 我很担心，他们会发觉我是一个住在宿舍的学生，从而挂断电话。但是他们却说：“我们还没准备好，一个月后你再来找我们吧。”这是个好消息，因为那时 软件还根本没有写出来呢。就是从那个时候起，我日以继夜地在这个小小的课外项目上工作，这导致了我学生生活的结束，以及通往微软公司的不平凡的旅程的开始。 What I remember above all about Harvard was being in the midst of so much energy and intelligence. It could be exhilarating, intimidating, sometimes even discouraging, but always challenging. It was an amazing privilege – and though I left early, I was transformed by my years at Harvard, the friendships I made, and the ideas I worked on. 不管怎样，我对哈佛的回忆主要都与充沛的精力和智力活动有关。哈佛的生活令人愉快，也令人感到有压力，有时甚至会感到泄气，但永远充满了挑战性。生活在哈佛是一种吸引人的特殊待遇……虽然我离开得比较早，但是我在这里的经历、在这里结识的朋友、在这里发展起来的一些想法，永远地改变了我。 But taking a serious look back … I do have one big regret. 但是，如果现在严肃地回忆起来，我确实有一个真正的遗憾。 I left Harvard with no real awareness of the awful inequities in the world – the appalling disparities of health, and wealth, and opportunity that condemn millions of people to lives of despair. 我离开哈佛的时候，根本没有意识到这个世界是多么的不平等。人类在健康、财富和机遇上的不平等大得可怕，它们使得无数的人们被迫生活在绝望之中。 I learned a lot here at Harvard about new ideas in economics and politics. I got great exposure to the advances being made in the sciences. 我在哈佛学到了很多经济学和政治学的新思想。我也了解了很多科学上的新进展。 But humanity’s greatest advances are not in its discoveries – but in how those discoveries are applied to reduce inequity. Whether through democracy, strong public education, quality health care, or broad economic opportunity – reducing inequity is the highest human achievement. 但是，人类最大的进步并不来自于这些发现，而是来自于那些有助于减少人类不平等的发现。不管通过何种手段——民主制度、健全的公共教育体系、高质量的医疗保健、还是广泛的经济机会——减少不平等始终是人类最大的成就。 I left campus knowing little about the millions of young people cheated out of educational opportunities here in this country. And I knew nothing about the millions of people living in unspeakable poverty and disease in developing countries. 我离开校园的时候，根本不知道在这个国家里，有几百万的年轻人无法获得接受教育的机会。我也不知道，发展中国家里有无数的人们生活在无法形容的贫穷和疾病之中。 It took me decades to find out. 我花了几十年才明白了这些事情。 You graduates came to Harvard at a different time. You know more about the world’s inequities than the classes that came before. In your years here, I hope you’ve had a chance to think about how – in this age of accelerating technology – we can finally take on these inequities, and we can solve them. 在座的各位同学，你们是在与我不同的时代来到哈佛的。你们比以前的学生，更多地了解世界是怎样的不平等。在你们的哈佛求学过程中，我希望你们已经思考过一个问题，那就是在这个新技术加速发展的时代，我们怎样最终应对这种不平等，以及我们怎样来解决这个问题。 Imagine, just for the sake of discussion, that you had a few hours a week and a few dollars a month to donate to a cause – and you wanted to spend that time and money where it would have the greatest impact in saving and improving lives. Where would you spend it? 为了讨论的方便，请想象一下，假如你每个星期可以捐献一些时间、每个月可以捐献一些钱——你希望这些时间和金钱，可以用到对拯救生命和改善人类生活有最大作用的地方。你会选择什么地方？ For Melinda and for me, the challenge is the same: how can we do the most good for the greatest number with the resources we have. 对Melinda（注：盖茨的妻子）和我来说，这也是我们面临的问题：我们如何能将我们拥有的资源发挥出最大的作用。 During our discussions on this question, Melinda and I read an article about the millions of children who were dying every year in poor countries from diseases that we had long ago made harmless in this country. Measles, malaria, pneumonia, hepatitis B, yellow fever. One disease I had never even heard of, rotavirus, was killing half a million kids each year – none of them in the United States. 在讨论过程中，Melinda和我读到了一篇文章，里面说在那些贫穷的国家，每年有数百万的儿童死于那些在美国早已不成问题的疾病。麻疹、疟疾、肺炎、乙型肝炎、黄热病、还有一种以前我从未听说过的轮状病毒，这些疾病每年导致50万儿童死亡，但是在美国一例死亡病例也没有。 We were shocked. We had just assumed that if millions of children were dying and they could be saved, the world would make it a priority to discover and deliver the medicines to save them. But it did not. For under a dollar, there were interventions that could save lives that just weren’t being delivered. 我们被震惊了。我们想，如果几百万儿童正在死亡线上挣扎，而且他们是可以被挽救的，那么世界理应将用药物拯救他们作为头等大事。但是事实并非如此。那些价格还不到一美元的救命的药剂，并没有送到他们的手中。 If you believe that every life has equal , it’s revolting to learn that some lives are seen as worth saving and others are not. We said to ourselves: "This can’t be true. But if it is true, it deserves to be the priority of our giving." 如果你相信每个生命都是平等的，那么当你发现某些生命被挽救了，而另一些生命被放弃了，你会感到无法接受。我们对自己说：“事情不可能如此。如果这是真的，那么它理应是我们努力的头等大事。” So we began our work in the same way anyone here would begin it. We asked: "How could the world let these children die?" 所以，我们用任何人都会想到的方式开始工作。我们问：“这个世界怎么可以眼睁睁看着这些孩子死去？” The answer is simple, and harsh. The market did not reward saving the lives of these children, and governments did not subsidize it. So the children died because their mothers and their fathers had no power in the market and no voice in the system. 答案很简单，也很令人难堪。在市场经济中，拯救儿童是一项没有利润的工作，政府也不会提供补助。这些儿童之所以会死亡，是因为他们的父母在经济上没有实力，在政治上没有能力发出声音。 But you and I have both. 但是，你们和我在经济上有实力，在政治上能够发出声音。 We can make market forces work better for the poor if we can develop a more creative capitalism – if we can stretch the reach of market forces so that more people can make a profit, or at least make a living, serving people who are suffering from the worst inequities. We also can press governments around the world to spend taxpayer money in ways that better reflect the s of the people who pay the taxes. 我们可以让市场更好地为穷人服务，如果我们能够设计出一种更有创新性的资本主义制度——如果我们可以改变市场，让更多的人可以获得利润，或者至少可 以维持生活——那么，这就可以帮到那些正在极端不平等的状况中受苦的人们。我们还可以向全世界的政府施压，要求他们将纳税人的钱，花到更符合纳税人价值观的地方。 If we can find approaches that meet the needs of the poor in ways that generate profits for business and votes for politicians, we will have found a sustainable way to reduce inequity in the world. This task is open-ended. It can never be finished. But a conscious effort to answer this challenge will change the world. 如果我们能够找到这样一种方法，既可以帮到穷人，又可以为商人带来利润，为政治家带来选票，那么我们就找到了一种减少世界性不平等的可持续的发展道路。这个任务是无限的。它不可能被完全完成，但是任何自觉地解决这个问题的尝试，都将会改变这个世界。 I am optimistic that we can do this, but I talk to skeptics who claim there is no hope. They say: "Inequity has been with us since the beginning, and will be with us till the end – because people just … don’t … care." I completely disagree. 在这个问题上，我是乐观的。但是，我也遇到过那些感到绝望的怀疑主义者。他们说：“不平等从人类诞生的第一天就存在，到人类灭亡的最后一天也将存在。——因为人类对这个问题根本不在乎。”我完全不能同意这种观点。 I believe we have more caring than we know what to do with. 我相信，问题不是我们不在乎，而是我们不知道怎么做。 All of us here in this Yard, at one time or another, have seen human tragedies that broke our hearts, and yet we did nothing – not because we didn’t care, but because we didn’t know what to do. If we had known how to help, we would have acted. 此刻在这个院子里的所有人，生命中总有这样或那样的时刻，目睹人类的悲剧，感到万分伤心。但是我们什么也没做，并非我们无动于衷，而是因为我们不知道做什么和怎么做。如果我们知道如何做是有效的，那么我们就会采取行动。 The barrier to change is not too little caring; it is too much complexity. 改变世界的阻碍，并非人类的冷漠，而是世界实在太复杂。 To turn caring into action, we need to see a problem, see a solution, and see the impact. But complexity blocks all three steps. 为了将关心转变为行动，我们需要找到问题，发现解决办法的方法，评估后果。但是世界的复杂性使得所有这些步骤都难于做到。 Even with the advent of the Internet and 24-hour news, it is still a complex enterprise to get people to truly see the problems. When an airplane crashes, officials immediately call a press conference. They promise to investigate, determine the cause, and prevent similar crashes in the future. 即使有了互联网和24小时直播的新闻台，让人们真正发现问题所在，仍然十分困难。当一架飞机坠毁了，官员们会立刻召开新闻发布会，他们承诺进行调查、找到原因、防止将来再次发生类似事故。 But if the officials were brutally honest, they would say: "Of all the people in the world who died today from preventable causes, one half of one percent of them were on this plane. We’re determined to do everything possible to solve the problem that took the lives of the one half of one percent." 但是如果那些官员敢说真话，他们就会说：“在今天这一天，全世界所有可以避免的死亡之中，只有0.5%的死者来自于这次空难。我们决心尽一切努力，调查这个0.5%的死亡原因。” The bigger problem is not the plane crash, but the millions of preventable deaths. 显然，更重要的问题不是这次空难，而是其他几百万可以预防的死亡事件。 We don’t read much about these deaths. The media covers what’s new – and millions of people dying is nothing new. So it stays in the background, where it’s easier to ignore. But even when we do see it or read about it, it’s difficult to keep our eyes on the problem. It’s hard to look at suffering if the situation is so complex that we don’t know how to help. And so we look away. 我们并没有很多机会了解那些死亡事件。媒体总是报告新闻，几百万人将要死去并非新闻。如果没有人报道，那么这些事件就很容易被忽视。另一方面，即使 我们确实目睹了事件本身或者看到了相关报道，我们也很难持续关注这些事件。看着他人受苦是令人痛苦的，何况问题又如此复杂，我们根本不知道如何去帮助他 人。所以我们会将脸转过去。 If we can really see a problem, which is the first step, we come to the second step: cutting through the complexity to find a solution. 就算我们真正发现了问题所在，也不过是迈出了第一步，接着还有第二步：那就是从复杂的事件中找到解决办法。 Finding solutions is essential if we want to make the most of our caring. If we have clear and proven answers anytime an organization or individual asks "How can I help?," then we can get action – and we can make sure that none of the caring in the world is wasted. But complexity makes it hard to mark a path of action for everyone who cares — and that makes it hard for their caring to matter. 如果我们要让关心落到实处，我们就必须找到解决办法。如果我们有一个清晰的和可靠的答案，那么当任何组织和个人发出疑问“如何我能提供帮助”的时 候，我们就能采取行动。我们就能够保证不浪费一丁点全世界人类对他人的关心。但是，世界的复杂性使得很难找到对全世界每一个有爱心的人都有效的行动方法，因此人类对他人的关心往往很难产生实际效果。 Cutting through complexity to find a solution runs through four predictable stages: determine a goal, find the highest-leverage approach, discover the ideal technology for that approach, and in the meantime, make the smartest application of the technology that you already have — whether it’s something sophisticated, like a drug, or something simpler, like a bednet. 从这个复杂的世界中找到解决办法，可以分为四个步骤：确定目标，找到最高效的方法，发现适用于这个方法的新技术，同时最聪明地利用现有的技术，不管它是复杂的药物，还是最简单的蚊帐。 The AIDS epidemic offers an example. The broad goal, of course, is to end the disease. The highest-leverage approach is prevention. The ideal technology would be a vaccine that gives lifetime immunity with a single dose. So governments, drug companies, and foundations fund vaccine research. But their work is likely to take more than a decade, so in the meantime, we have to work with what we have in hand – and the best prevention approach we have now is getting people to avoid risky behavior. 艾滋病就是一个例子。总的目标，毫无疑问是消灭这种疾病。最高效的方法是预防。最理想的技术是发明一种疫苗，只要注射一次，就可以终生免疫。所以， 政府、制药公司、基金会应该资助疫苗研究。但是，这样研究工作很可能十年之内都无法完成。因此，与此同时，我们必须使用现有的技术，目前最有效的预防方法 就是设法让人们避免那些危险的行为。 Pursuing that goal starts the four-step cycle again. This is the pattern. The crucial thing is to never stop thinking and working – and never do what we did with malaria and tuberculosis in the 20th century – which is to surrender to complexity and quit. 要实现这个新的目标，又可以采用新的四步循环。这是一种模式。关键的东西是永远不要停止思考和行动。我们千万不能再犯上个世纪在疟疾和肺结核上犯过的错误，那时我们因为它们太复杂，而放弃了采取行动。 The final step – after seeing the problem and finding an approach – is to measure the impact of your work and share your successes and failures so that others learn from your efforts. 在发现问题和找到解决方法之后，就是最后一步——评估工作结果，将你的成功经验或者失败经验传播出去，这样其他人就可以从你的努力中有所收获。 You have to have the statistics, of course. You have to be able to show that a program is vaccinating millions more children. You have to be able to show a decline in the number of children dying from these diseases. This is essential not just to improve the program, but also to help draw more investment from business and government. 当然，你必须有一些统计数字。你必须让他人知道，你的项目为几百万儿童新接种了疫苗。你也必须让他人知道，儿童死亡人数下降了多少。这些都是很关键的，不仅有利于改善项目效果，也有利于从商界和政府得到更多的帮助。 But if you want to inspire people to participate, you have to show more than numbers; you have to convey the human impact of the work – so people can feel what saving a life means to the families affected. 但是，这些还不够，如果你想激励其他人参加你的项目，你就必须拿出更多的统计数字；你必须展示你的项目的人性因素，这样其他人就会感到拯救一个生命，对那些处在困境中的家庭到底意味着什么。 I remember going to Davos some years back and sitting on a global health panel that was discussing ways to save millions of lives. Millions! Think of the thrill of saving just one person’s life – then multiply that by millions. … Yet this was the most boring panel I’ve ever been on – ever. So boring even I couldn’t bear it. 几年前，我去瑞士达沃斯旁听一个全球健康问题论坛，会议的内容有关于如何拯救几百万条生命。天哪，是几百万！想一想吧，拯救一个人的生命已经让人何等激动，现在你要把这种激动再乘上几百万倍……但是，不幸的是，这是我参加过的最最乏味的论坛，乏味到我无法强迫自己听下去。 What made that experience especially striking was that I had just come from an event where we were introducing version 13 of some piece of software, and we had people jumping and shouting with excitement. I love getting people excited about software – but why can’t we generate even more excitement for saving lives? 那次经历之所以让我难忘，是因为之前我们刚刚发布了一个软件的第13个版本，我们让观众激动得跳了起来，喊出了声。我喜欢人们因为软件而感到激动，那么我们为什么不能够让人们因为能够拯救生命而感到更加激动呢？ You can’t get people excited unless you can help them see and feel the impact. And how you do that – is a complex question. 除非你能够让人们看到或者感受到行动的影响力，否则你无法让人们激动。如何做到这一点，并不是一件简单的事。 Still, I’m optimistic. Yes, inequity has been with us forever, but the new tools we have to cut through complexity have not been with us forever. They are new – they can help us make the most of our caring – and that’s why the future can be different from the past. 同前面一样，在这个问题上，我依然是乐观的。不错，人类的不平等有史以来一直存在，但是那些能够化繁为简的新工具，却是最近才出现的。这些新工具可以帮助我们，将人类的同情心发挥最大的作用，这就是为什么将来同过去是不一样的。 The defining and ongoing innovations of this age – biotechnology, the computer, the Internet – give us a chance we’ve never had before to end extreme poverty and end death from preventable disease. 这个时代无时无刻不在涌现出新的革新——生物技术，计算机，互联网——它们给了我们一个从未有过的机会，去终结那些极端的贫穷和非恶性疾病的死亡。 Sixty years ago, George Marshall came to this commencement and announced a plan to assist the nations of post-war Europe. He said: "I think one difficulty is that the problem is one of such enormous complexity that the very mass of facts presented to the public by press and radio make it exceedingly difficult for the man in the street to reach a clear appraisement of the situation. It is virtually impossible at this distance to grasp at all the real significance of the situation." 六十年前，乔治·马歇尔也是在这个地方的毕业典礼上，宣布了一个计划，帮助那些欧洲国家的战后建设。他说：“我认为，困难的一点是这个问题太复杂，报纸和电台向公众源源不断地提供各种事实，使得大街上的普通人极端难于清晰地判断形势。事实上，经过层层传播，想要真正地把握形势，是根本不可能的。” Thirty years after Marshall made his address, as my class graduated without me, technology was emerging that would make the world smaller, more open, more visible, less distant. 马歇尔发表这个演讲之后的三十年，我那一届学生毕业，当然我不在其中。那时，新技术刚刚开始萌芽，它们将使得这个世界变得更小、更开放、更容易看到、距离更近。 The emergence of low-cost personal computers gave rise to a powerful network that has transformed opportunities for learning and communicating. 低成本的个人电脑的出现，使得一个强大的互联网有机会诞生，它为学习和交流提供了巨大的机会。 The magical thing about this network is not just that it collapses distance and makes everyone your neighbor. It also dramatically increases the number of brilliant minds we can have working together on the same problem – and that scales up the rate of innovation to a staggering degree. 网络的神奇之处，不仅仅是它缩短了物理距离，使得天涯若比邻。它还极大地增加了怀有共同想法的人们聚集在一起的机会，我们可以为了解决同一个问题，一起共同工作。这就大大加快了革新的进程，发展速度简直快得让人震惊。 At the same time, for every person in the world who has access to this technology, five people don’t. That means many creative minds are left out of this discussion -- smart people with practical intelligence and relevant experience who don’t have the technology to hone their talents or contribute their ideas to the world. 与此同时，世界上有条件上网的人，只是全部人口的六分之一。这意味着，还有许多具有创造性的人们，没有加入到我们的讨论中来。那些有着实际的操作经验和相关经历的聪明人，却没有技术来帮助他们，将他们的天赋或者想法与全世界分享。 We need as many people as possible to have access to this technology, because these advances are triggering a revolution in what human beings can do for one another. They are making it possible not just for national governments, but for universities, corporations, smaller organizations, and even individuals to see problems, see approaches, and measure the impact of their efforts to address the hunger, poverty, and desperation George Marshall spoke of 60 years ago. 我们需要尽可能地让更多的人有机会使用新技术，因为这些新技术正在引发一场革命，人类将因此可以互相帮助。新技术正在创造一种可能，不仅是政府，还包括大学、公司、小机构、甚至个人，能够发现问题所在、能够找到解决办法、能够评估他们努力的效果，去改变那些马歇尔六十年前就说到过的问题——饥饿、贫 穷和绝望。 Members of the Harvard Family: Here in the Yard is one of the great collections of intellectual talent in the world. 哈佛是一个大家庭。这个院子里在场的人们，是全世界最有智力的人类群体之一。 What for? 我们可以做些什么？ There is no question that the faculty, the alumni, the students, and the benefactors of Harvard have used their power to improve the lives of people here and around the world. But can we do more? Can Harvard dedicate its intellect to improving the lives of people who will never even hear its name? 毫无疑问，哈佛的老师、校友、学生和资助者，已经用他们的能力改善了全世界各地人们的生活。但是，我们还能够再做什么呢？有没有可能，哈佛的人们可以将他们的智慧，用来帮助那些甚至从来没有听到过“哈佛”这个名字的人？ Let me make a request of the deans and the professors – the intellectual leaders here at Harvard: As you hire new faculty, award tenure, review curriculum, and determine degree requirements, please ask yourselves: 请允许我向各位院长和教授，提出一个请求——你们是哈佛的智力领袖，当你们雇用新的老师、授予终身教职、评估课程、决定学位颁发标准的时候，请问你们自己如下的问题： Should our best minds be dedicated to solving our biggest problems? 我们最优秀的人才是否在致力于解决我们最大的问题？ Should Harvard encourage its faculty to take on the world’s worst inequities? Should Harvard students learn about the depth of global poverty … the prevalence of world hunger … the scarcity of clean water …the girls kept out of school … the children who die from diseases we can cure? 哈佛是否鼓励她的老师去研究解决世界上最严重的不平等？哈佛的学生是否从全球那些极端的贫穷中学到了什么……世界性的饥荒……清洁的水资源的缺乏……无法上学的女童……死于非恶性疾病的儿童……哈佛的学生有没有从中学到东西？ Should the world’s most privileged people learn about the lives of the world’s least privileged? 那些世界上过着最优越生活的人们，有没有从那些最困难的人们身上学到东西？ These are not rhetorical questions – you will answer with your policies. 这些问题并非语言上的修辞。你必须用自己的行动来回答它们。 My mother, who was filled with pride the day I was admitted here – never stopped pressing me to do more for others. A few days before my wedding, she hosted a bridal event, at which she read aloud a letter about marriage that she had written to Melinda. My mother was very ill with cancer at the time, but she saw one more opportunity to deliver her message, and at the close of the letter she said: "From those to whom much is given, much is expected." 我的母亲在我被哈佛大学录取的那一天，曾经感到非常骄傲。她从没有停止督促我，去为他人做更多的事情。在我结婚的前几天，她主持了一个新娘进我家的仪式。在这个仪式上，她高声朗读了一封关于婚姻的信，这是她写给Melinda的。那时，我的母亲已经因为癌症病入膏肓，但是她还是认为这是又一个传播她的信念的机会。在那封信的结尾，她写道：“对于那些接受了许多帮助的人们，他们还在期待更多的帮助。” When you consider what those of us here in this Yard have been given – in talent, privilege, and opportunity – there is almost no limit to what the world has a right to expect from us. 想一想吧，我们在这个院子里的这些人，被给予过什么——天赋、特权、机遇——那么可以这样说，全世界的人们几乎有无限的权力，期待我们做出贡献。 In line with the promise of this age, I want to exhort each of the graduates here to take on an issue – a complex problem, a deep inequity, and become a specialist on it. If you make it the focus of your career, that would be phenomenal. But you don’t have to do that to make an impact. For a few hours every week, you can use the growing power of the Internet to get informed, find others with the same interests, see the barriers, and find ways to cut through them. 同这个时代的期望一样，我也要向今天各位毕业的同学提出一个忠告：你们要选择一个问题，一个复杂的问题，一个有关于人类深刻的不平等的问题，然后你 们要变成这个问题的专家。如果你们能够使得这个问题成为你们职业的核心，那么你们就会非常杰出。但是，你们不必一定要去做那些大事。每个星期只用几个小 时，你就可以通过互联网得到信息，找到志同道合的朋友，发现困难所在，找到解决它们的途径。 Don’t let complexity stop you. Be activists. Take on the big inequities. It will be one of the great experiences of your lives. 不要让这个世界的复杂性阻碍你前进。要成为一个行动主义者。将解决人类的不平等视为己任。它将成为你生命中最重要的经历之一。 You graduates are coming of age in an amazing time. As you leave Harvard, you have technology that members of my class never had. You have awareness of global inequity, which we did not have. And with that awareness, you likely also have an informed conscience that will torment you if you abandon these people whose lives you could change with very little effort. You have more than we had; you must start sooner, and carry on longer. 在座的各位毕业的同学，你们所处的时代是一个神奇的时代。当你们离开哈佛的时候，你们拥有的技术，是我们那一届学生所没有的。你们已经了解到了世界 上的不平等，我们那时还不知道这些。有了这样的了解之后，要是你再弃那些你可以帮助的人们于不顾，就将受到良心的谴责，只需一点小小的努力，你就可以改变 那些人们的生活。你们比我们拥有更大的能力；你们必须尽早开始，尽可能长时期坚持下去。 Knowing what you know, how could you not? 知道了你们所知道的一切，你们怎么可能不采取行动呢？ And I hope you will come back here to Harvard 30 years from now and reflect on what you have done with your talent and your energy. I hope you will judge yourselves not on your professional accomplishments alone, but also on how well you have addressed the world’s deepest inequities … on how well you treated people a world away who have nothing in common with you but their humanity. 我希望，30年后你们还会再回到哈佛，想起你们用自己的天赋和能力所做出的一切。我希望，在那个时候，你们用来评价自己的标准，不仅仅是你们的专业成就，而包括你们为改变这个世界深刻的不平等所做出的努力，以及你们如何善待那些远隔千山万水、与你们毫不涉及的人们，你们与他们唯一的共同点就是同为人 类。 Good luck. 最后，祝各位同学好运。
依据乔布斯转记和生平，以及他的医疗检查记录。根据肿瘤生长的规律，作者提出： “计算机中的铅以及重金属引发了乔布斯的肿瘤”。 “乔布斯是电子工业暴露致癌物引起癌症的最典型事例”。 从他肿瘤的增长速度推测，他所罹患的胰腺肿瘤是在1970年代在HP工作期间暴露所致。 他的素食习惯延长了生存时间。 他的潜意识告诉他将早逝 November 2011 Return to Newsletter Home Page Printer Friendly PDF Volume 10 Issue 11 Why Did Steve Jobs Die? Steve Jobs gave tacit permission and encouragement for me to write this newsletter article about the medical and nutritional aspects of his life when he commissioned his biographer to tell a true account. “I wanted my kids to know about me…” “Also, when I got sick, I realized other people would write about me if I died, and they wouldn’t know anything. They’d get it all wrong. So I wanted to make sure someone heard what I had to say.”(556) Jobs would have been pleased to hear my challenging second opinions about his pancreatic cancer and his diet, because my thoughts are in agreement with what he intuitively and factually knew to be correct. Hopefully, my account will bring some peace of mind to his family and friends after his untimely death. This article is not meant as a critique of his doctors and their medical care. I am certain these professionals performed their best for him. In hindsight, everything is clearer. The purpose of this article is to set the record straight. Jobs’ Cancer Began and Metastasized When He Was a Young Man “In October 2003 he happened to run into his urologist who had treated him, and she asked him to get a CAT scan of his kidneys and ureter.(453) It had been 5 years since his last scan. The new scan revealed nothing wrong with his kidneys, but it did show a shadow on his pancreas.” By the time a tumor is large enough to be seen on a CAT scan it has grown to a size of at least 2 millimeters (mm) (half the size of a BB, twice the size of a period on this page). My guess is that the shadow seen on his pancreas was at least one centimeter (cm) in diameter (the size of an eraser on a pencil). This size mass contains 1 billion cells and has been growing on average for 10 years . Death usually occurs when the size of individual tumors reaches ten centimeters in diameter (4 inches). Pancreatic neuro-endocrine (islet cell) tumors, the kind that Jobs had, fit this pattern of growth . The natural history of the growth of Steve Jobs’ pancreatic cancer can be determined by mathematical calculations. The interval between his diagnosis at age 48 and his death at age 56 was approximately 8 years (October of 2003 and October 5, 2011). From these dates it can be determined that the tumor mass in his pancreas doubled in size every 10 months. (Commonly, solid tumors of various organs double in size every 3 to 9 months.) His was a very slow growing tumor. By knowing this stable rate of doubling (every 10 months), the date when Jobs’ cancer began can be calculated. His cancer started when he was a young adult, possibly as young as 24 years old. Similar calculations show that his cancer spread from his pancreas to his liver (and other parts of his body) more than two decades before his surgery on July 31, 2004. (Exact methods for doing these calculations are found at the end of this article.) One of Jobs’ greatest regrets when he found out he had incurable cancer was that he had refused to have surgery for 9 months after being diagnosed. He believed he might have been cured if he had acted earlier. Since he was in his mid-twenties when the cancer spread throughout his body, removing his CAT-scan-detected cancer in October of 2003 would never have cured him. How Cancer Grows People unfamiliar with the manner in which cancer grows are easily fooled into thinking it spreads like wildfire, almost overnight, because one moment the person appears to be in good health, and then the next moment the patient has a body full of disease. When the cancer is first diagnosed people believe that this is “early disease,” that can be “caught in time and cured” if removed. This fairytale view is, unfortunately, untrue. Cancer grows at a steady rate (referred to as the doubling time ). Early growth is invisible because the cancer is microscopic in size. This increase in size of the cancer is hidden from view as one cancer cell divides into two cells, two into four, and so on. The doublings remain undetectable until the cancer reaches a size of 1 mm (period-size), which now contains a million cells, after about 6 years of growth. After 10 years of growth, the tumor is 1 cm in diameter (eraser-size) and contains one billion cells. At this point in its natural history the doublings become very apparent: one billion cancer cells divide into a mass containing two billion cells, and with the next doubling there are 4 billion cancer cells inside the patient’s body. Thus, cancer is undetectable by the patient and his physician for the first two-thirds of its natural history, and this leads to confusion. Cancer Caused Steve Jobs Troubles in His Thirties and Forties A report about Jobs’ mannerisms during meetings in 1987 said, “His hands, which are slightly and inexplicably yellow, are in constant motion.”(223). Yellow discoloration of the skin is a classic sign of jaundice . Cancer in the head of the pancreas commonly causes blockage of the flow of bile , resulting in jaundice. Possibly, the tumor was at this time (1987), causing partial and intermittent obstruction. His cancer also caused him abdominal and back pains at least 5 years before his diagnosis in October of 2003. “I was driving up to Pixar and down to Apple in my black Porsche convertible, and I started to get kidney stones. I would rush to the hospital and the hospital would give me a shot of Demerol in the butt and eventually I would pass it.”(334) The CAT scan obtained in October of 2003 (which showed the shadow on his pancreas) revealed nothing wrong with his kidneys.(453) Kidney stones are caused by a diet high in animal protein. As a strict vegan, it is unlikely that Jobs had kidney stones. I do not have his medical reports, however, I believe some or all of these episodes of pain were misdiagnosed and mistreated as pain from kidney stones. Jobs was actually suffering from the cancer growing in his pancreas. Proof that the cancer had been present for at least 10 years before the time of diagnosis came at the time of his surgery on July 31, 2004. “Unfortunately, the cancer had spread. During the operation the doctors had found three liver metastases.”(456) For his surgeons to see these tumors on the surface of his liver with the naked eye, each cancer would likely have been at least 1 cm in size. As I explained above, these metastasizes began more than two decades before, when Jobs was in his mid-twenties. Finding tumors on the liver means the cancer has also spread to other organs of the body many years before. Jobs considered himself to be a very intuitive person, who relied on his own gut feelings . At some level of consciousness he may have known that he had disease twenty or more years before his diagnosis. In 1983, “Jobs confided in John Sculley (Apple’s CEO) that he believed he would die young.”(155) Jobs was only 28 years old when he spoke this prophecy. Lead (Pb) and Other Carcinogens from Computers Caused Jobs’ Cancer Jobs would speculate that his cancer was caused by the grueling year that he spent, starting in 1997, running both Apple and Pixar.(452, 333) He guessed, “That’s probably when this cancer started growing, because my immune system was pretty weak at that time.”(452) However, based on reliable calculations, his cancer likely started decades earlier, as a young adult, when he was building computers and other electronics by his own hands without adequate safety precautions. The summer after his freshman year at Homestead High School in Los Altos, California, Jobs called Bill Hewlett of HP on the phone, “And he answered and chatted with me for about twenty minutes. He got me the parts, but he also got me a job in the plant where they made frequency counters.”(17) Here he was exposed to toxic chemicals , known to cause cancer of the pancreas. Another example; Jobs soldered circuit boards in the early days of Apple.(67) This compound (solder) is typically an alloy containing lead, tin, and other metals. Lead is classified as a probable human carcinogen, a class of substances that are directly responsible for damaging DNA, and promoting or aiding cancer. Lead is suspected of causing cancer of the pancreas . Steve Jobs may be the best-known example of the high risk of cancer for people working in the electronics industries from occupational exposure to carcinogens. The metals contained in personal computers include aluminum, antimony, arsenic, barium, beryllium, cadmium, chromium, cobalt, copper, gallium, gold, iron, lead, manganese, mercury, palladium, platinum, selenium, silver, and zinc. Steve Jobs getting cancer was an unfortunate accident—like being struck by lightning or hit by a car. The carcinogen(s) entered his body and due to genetics, “bad luck,” or other unknown and uncontrollable factors his body was susceptible. The cause of his cancer was not due to his vegan diet. In fact, his healthy diet likely slowed the growth of his tumor, delayed the time of diagnosis, and prolonged his useful life. Jobs Suffered with Unfounded Regret, Believing He Had Hastened His Own Death Jobs lived the final 8 years of his life with regret, guilt, and remorse over delaying his surgery for 9 months after the initial diagnosis of cancer. With one honest sentence his doctors could have relieved him of this heavy burden. This simple fact could have been told: “Mr. Jobs, you had a body full of cancer long before October of 2003, when you were diagnosed by a needle biopsy.” Apparently, not one of his doctors—not Jeffrey Norton, who had operated on his pancreas in 2004, nor James Eason, who had performed his liver transplant in 2009—told Jobs this indisputable truth. In October of 2003, after confirming he had a mass in his pancreas, one of his doctors “suggested that he should make sure his affairs were in order, a polite way of saying that he might have only months to live. That evening they performed a biopsy by sticking an endoscope down his throat and into his intestines so they could put a needle into his pancreas and get a few cells from his tumor…It turned out to be an islet cell or pancreatic neuro-endocrine tumor…”(453) Jobs initially refused surgery to remove the cancer. “I really didn’t want them to open my body, so I tried to see if a few other things would work.”(454) Nine months later, “In July 2004 a CAT scan showed that the tumor had grown and possibly spread.”(455) Jobs underwent surgery on Saturday, July 31, 2004, at Stanford Medical Center. He had a modified Whipple procedure, which took part of his pancreas.(455) He reassured his Apple employees the next day when he wrote in an e-mail that the type of cancer he had, “represents about 1% of the total cases of pancreatic cancer diagnosed each year, and can be cured by surgical removal if diagnosed in time (mine was).”(455) In retrospect, all would agree this statement was untrue. Unfortunately, he spent the remainder of his life believing he could have been cured if he had not delayed his surgery for nine months. “ According to Steve Jobs’ biographer , Walter Isaacson, the Apple mastermind eventually came to regret the decision he had made years earlier to reject potentially life-saving surgery in favor of alternative treatments like acupuncture, dietary supplements and juices. His early resistance to surgery was apparently incomprehensible to his wife and close friends, who continually urged him to do it.” “We talked about this a lot,” says his biographer. “He wanted to talk about it, how he regretted it. … I think he felt he should have been operated on sooner.” This falsehood was repeated to the world shortly after Jobs death in a 60-minutes interview with Mr. Isaacson. By the beginning of 2008 it was clear to Jobs and his doctors that his cancer was spreading.(476) In April 2009 he underwent a liver transplant. “When his doctors took out his liver, they found spots on the peritoneum, the thin membrane that surrounds internal organs. In addition, there were tumors throughout the liver, which meant it was likely that the cancer had migrated elsewhere as well.”(484) “But, by July 2011, his cancer had spread to his bones and other parts of his body…”(555). Almost everyone had admitted defeat. He died October 5, 2011 from a body full of cancer that began when he was a young adult working in Silicon Valley. The overall consensus was, and still is, that Jobs acted selfishly, stupidly, and irresponsibly when he refused surgery in October of 2003, at the time of his original diagnosis. Based on the natural history of his disease, Jobs acted in none of these ways. The cancer had spread many years before his diagnosis, and was unstoppable by any means. Job’s Vegan Diet Prolonged His Life Jobs became a vegetarian in his freshman year at Reed College in Portland, Oregon.(36) He would at times eat only fruit, and considered himself a fruitarian.(63, 68, 83) He was a lifelong strict vegan (no animal foods), except for occasional lapses.(91, 155, 260, 458, 527, 528) Jobs often became very upset when his meals were not prepared to his specifications. When a waiter at a restaurant served him a sauce with sour cream, Jobs got nasty.(185). He was observed to “spit out a mouthful of soup one day after he learned that it contained butter.”(260) Throughout most of his life he was considered a “prickly, whip-thin vegetarian.”(243) He was described as looking “rather like a boxer, aggressive and elusively graceful, or like an elegant jungle cat ready to spring at its prey.”(297) However, most of his family, friends, and coworkers did not understand or sympathize with Jobs’ vegan diet. His diet was in sharp contrast to that of his Apple co-founder, Steve Wozniak, who ate at Denny’s and whose favorite foods were typical American pizzas and burgers.(189) Wozniak, who is overweight, was four years older than Jobs and is still alive. Because of this apparent paradox many people discount the importance of a healthy vegan diet. After he developed cancer Jobs remembered some of his earlier teachings about the benefits of low-protein vegetarian diets for cancer.(548) I believe Jobs was right, and a healthy low-fat vegan diet will slow the growth (doubling times) of a cancer and prolong a patient’s life. However, animal fats, animal proteins, vegetable oils, and vegetarian foods made with isolated soy proteins can promote cancer growth. Steve Jobs ate in restaurants often. His vegan diet was likely too high in vegetable oils and “fake” meats and cheeses (foods with high amounts of isolated soy proteins). The Ultimate Insult: Jobs Was Forced to Eat Meat “One of the side effects of the operation would become a problem for Jobs because of his obsessive diets and the weird routine of purging and fasting that he had practiced since he was a teenager. Because the pancreas provides the enzymes that allow the stomach to digest food and absorb nutrients, removing part of the organ makes it hard to get enough protein.”(455) He was advised to eat meat and fish.(455) Lack of protein in Jobs’ diet was not his problem, however his friends, family, biographer, nutritionist, and physicians would not stop attacking his weird obsession with extremely restrictive diets.(477) Jobs lost 40, and then eventually 50 pounds, which was from the partial loss of his pancreas from the initial surgery, the use of morphine to control his pain, his chemotherapies, his liver transplant surgery and drugs used to suppress organ rejection.(477) Until his death, his doctors begged him to consume high quality protein.(548) Obviously the insistence that he eat animal foods made no difference at all in his health; and part of the reason is that the advice was incorrect. “Powell (Jobs’ wife) had been a vegan when they were first married, but after her husband’s operation she began to diversify their family diet with fish and other proteins.”(477) Jobs eventually did succumb to these intense demands and ate seafood and eggs.(527,528) For the false hope that eating animals would help, he was forced to turn his back on what he knew to be good for his body, his religious beliefs, and his concerns for the welfare of animals and the environment. The overall consensus was, and still is, that Jobs acted selfishly, stupidly, and irresponsibly by being a vegan. But, he lived more than 30 years with cancer of the pancreas. (His medical treatments did little or nothing to prolong his life, and caused him great misery at huge expense.) Summary Comments Neither Steve Jobs’ vegan lifestyle nor turning down surgery were the acts of an insane man. Rather both decisions demonstrate his rationality, genius, intuitiveness, and internal strength to stand up for what he knew to be right. The truth may now give family and friends some peace of mind. Also those who tied Jobs’ cancer to his vegan diet can now go back to healthy eating. Understanding and publicizing the cause of his cancer should also focus more attention on the serious harms caused by chemicals used in the electronic industries. Consider the misfortune that happened to Steve Jobs, one of the wealthiest and most powerful men to have ever lived. A little cost-free, harmless, and honest counsel would have greatly improved the physical, mental, and emotional wellbeing of Jobs—especially during the last 8 years of his life, when he gave so much to us. I own two MacBook Pro computers, an iPhone, an iPad2, use iTunes daily, and my grandchildren love Pixar movies. Thank you Steve Jobs—I offer this report as a small gratitude for all you have done. Calculations on the Growth of Steve Jobs’ Cancer of the Pancreas Use the doubling time calculator found at: http://www.chestx-ray.com/spn/DoublingTime.html . This calculator is a simple math tool—it makes no difference what kind of cancer cell (lung or pancreas) is being examined. Calculations from the time of diagnosis in October of 2003: Using the doubling time calculator (enter the day of his diagnosis, say October 15, 2003 and the day of his death, October 5, 2011) to determine that the tumor was growing for 2912 days (~8 years) during the time Jobs was known to have cancer. Assume that the tumor mass—the shadow found on the CAT scan in October of 2003—was 10 mm (1 cm) in size (likely the tumor was much larger, but I do not have his medical records). When he died more than 8 years (2912 days) later the tumor would have grown to about 100 mm (10 cm), if it had not been removed. Entering the size of the initial tumor in the pancreas (10 mm) and the size at death (100 mm), and the 2912 days it took for the cancer to grow during this interval, the calculator tells us that the doubling time of his tumor was 292 days (meaning the tumor doubled in size about every 10 months). Calculating backwards to find the time when the cancer began: enter a figure of 10 micrometers (um) (use .01 mm) for the size of the first cancer cell in his pancreas, and enter 10 mm for size of the tumor found by CAT scan on October 15, 2003. (One micrometer (um) = 1/1,000,000 meter = 0.000001 meter = 1/1000 millimeter (mm) = .001 millimeter (mm); therefore 10 um = .01 mm.) With this doubling time of 292 days, the time to grow from 10 um to 1 cm would be 8,740 days or about 24 years. (The number of 8,740 is determined by guessing various time intervals in the doubling time calculator, so that the correct doubling time is reached.) Jobs was 48 years old when diagnosed. Subtracting 24 years means he could have been as young as 24 years old when the cancer started. By no coincidence this is just after he started working at Hewlett Packard and continued over the next several years to work intimately with many carcinogenic substances found in the electronics industries. Calculations about the metastatic disease found on Jobs’ liver during his surgery on July 31, 2004: Using the doubling time calculator (entering the day of his surgery, July 31, 2004, and the day of his death, October 5, 2011) means Jobs’ tumors in his liver (and the rest of his body) were known by his doctors to be growing for 2622 days (~7 years) during this time interval. Assume that the 3 metastatic tumors found on the surface of his liver at the time of his initial surgery on July 31, 2004 were each 1 cm (10 mm) in size. When he died more than 7 years later (2622 days), then these tumors would have grown to about 100 mm (10 cm) in size each (if his liver had not been removed during his 2009 liver transplant). Entering the size of the liver tumors at the time of surgery (10 mm) and the size at the time of death (100 mm), and the 2622 days it took for the cancer to grow during this interval, the calculator tells us that the doubling time of his liver tumors was 263 days (meaning every 8½ months the tumor in his liver doubled in size). The doubling times of the original pancreatic tumor and the metastatic liver tumors should be the same; and they are similar: 10 vs. 8½ months. Calculating backwards to find the time when the tumor metastasized to his liver (and his bones and the rest of his body): enter the figure of 10 micrometers (.01 mm) used for the first cell that spread to the liver, and 10 mm for the tumor found on July 31, 2004 on the liver. You then look for a time interval that would fit for a doubling time of 263 days. The time to grow from 10 um to 10 mm would be 7,870 days or about 22 years. At the time of his surgery, on July 31, 2004, when he was found to have metastatic cancer, he was 49 years old. Subtracting 22 years from this age means he was 27 years old when his pancreatic cancer metastasized. The best-case scenario would be that the tumors seen on Jobs’ liver during his July 31, 2004 surgery were only 1 mm in size (period-size, seen with a magnifying glass or microscope.) The doubling time would then have been every 132 days. (Enter into the calculator 1 mm and 100 mm and 2622 days to get a 132-day doubling time.) Calculating backwards from 1 mm to .01 mm at a doubling time of 132 days would mean the tumor started growing in Jobs’ liver more than 7 years (2640 days) before his surgery on July 31, 2004. Under this best-case scenario, he would have been 42 years old when the tumor had spread from his pancreas to his liver and the rest of his body. There is no possible way that the cancer could have been caught in time (before it spread), even if he would have submitted to surgery at the time of his initial diagnosis in October of 2003, or even 6 years before this date. However, because no one told him these easy-to-determine facts, well known in the medical-scientific community, he lived for 8 years until his death with unfounded and unnecessary guilt. Until now, his family and friends have lived under that same dark cloud. Calculations and text updated on 12/2/2011 (math error corrected)
本文转自小木虫网.... I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories. The first story is about connecting the dots. I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out? It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college. And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting. It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5 deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example: Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating. None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later. Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life. My second story is about love and loss. I was lucky — I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation — the Macintosh — a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating. I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over. I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life. During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I retuned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together. I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle. My third story is about death. When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something. Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart. About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for "prepare to die." It means to try and tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes. I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and, thankfully, I'm fine now. This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope it's the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept: No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It's Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it's quite true. Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma -- which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary. When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the "bibles" of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 60s, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and Polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along. It was idealistic, overflowing with neat tools and great notions. Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I've always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. Thank you all very much.
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