The courage to be unreasonable

　　Success is really about being ready for the good opportunities that come before you. It'snot to have a detailed plan about everything you're going to do, you can't plan innovation orinspiration, but you can be ready for it. And when you see it, you can jump on it and you canmake a difference.

　　——Eric Emerson Schmidt

　　成功实际上就是抓住面前的好机会。不需要有详尽的计划，因为你无法为创新或者灵感做计划，但你可以为此准备着。等机会来临，你就可以有所作为。

　　——埃里克·施密特

　　背景资料

　　本文节选自2009年5月埃里克·施密特受邀在宾夕法尼亚大学毕业典礼发表的演讲。在演讲中他鼓励大学生要勇于挑战世俗，要有坚韧的品格，要培养领导能力和团队精神，从而使这个世界变得越来越好。

　　The courage to be unreasonable

　　——Eric Schmidt

　　Thank you for that. Let me begin by congratulating all the graduates. It's exciting to begraduating and I especially want to congratulate the parents. And remember that they still needyou and maybe they'll now listen to you. And if you aren't sure who I'm talking to, I'm actuallytalking to both the parents and the students, so congratulations to everybody.

　　We owe a debt in my industry-to Penn-that is profound . It was in 1946 that the ENIAC wasinvented, right here in a basement down the street. And literally everything that you see, everycomputer, every mobile phone, every device , descends from the principles that were inventedright here. This really is the center of my world.

　　And now 63 years later, 250 of your alumni work at Google. This is the most desirable placefor us to hire interns anywhere in the world and I can tell you that we know the quality of thegraduates that I see before me are the best in the world. It is exciting to be part of this.

　　Now, when I think about Penn, I think about the metaphor of resilience , of a culture thatworks, of a hunger to change. If you think about 20 years ago, when Penn was struggling, and thechanges that the people around me made 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 beenbuilt here, you see that the culture works, and that the combination that you see represented on thestage, that the parents are so proud to have sent their students to really has delivered, the very bestthat we can do here in America.

　　And of course, we also have the best cheesesteaks in the world, which is not so bad.

　　When I look at this group, I see the Google and Facebook generation. And when I was first inthis stadium , my track buddies and I got in a station wagon -you remember them-and I drove uphere to go to a track and field event with the great Marty Liquori. And I think this is almost 40years ago. We had Tang, you have Red Bull.

　　Now, we programmed computers in a language called BASIC. You, of course, use Java .

　　We had VCRs that had an hour of video and cost $700. You use YouTube and you upload 15hours of YouTube video every minute.

　　And we got our news from newspapers. Remember them? You get news from blogs andtweets . And for those of you who don't know what a tweet is, it's not what you hear in a zoo.

　　We stood in line to buy Pong, you stood in line to buy the Wii.

　　We didn't tell people about our most embarrassing moments in college, you record them andpost them on YouTube and Facebook every day. And I am looking forward to watching these forthe next 30 or 40 years.

　　We used mainframe computers with 300 megabytes of storage . You use an iPod with 120gigabytes , that's about 500 times more。

　　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 took pictures with cameras. We navigated with maps; we listened totransistor radios. Again, you have a cell phone.

　　We thought that the marvels of computers and technology would help us improve the world.

　　You agree, and we're both right. So despite all these marvels, this is a great time to be graduating.

　　Now, you went to college to develop the kind of analytical thinking skills to deal withenormous amounts of complex information that you'll face for the rest of your life. But I wouldargue you have in many ways the best opportunity before you because you're graduating into atough time.

　　I used my favorite search engine, of course, to find out "What did the Great Depression spur?" Well, it spurred Rice Krispies, Twinkies and the beer can. You would have never gottenthrough college without these things, right?

　　So it seems to me that with all the technology and connectedness that we see, you have anopportunity that's even better, even stronger than anything that I ever faced when I was sitting inthe same seats. You are seeing a situation where due to the enormous goodwill of people-here onthe stage and others-we have an opportunity to have everyone in the world have access to all theworld's information.

　　This has never been possible. And why is this so important? Why is ubiquitous informationso profound? It's a tremendous equalizer . Information is power, people have fought over it,people care a lot about it, it serves as a check 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, first thing youwould do is shut off all the communication so that people couldn't actually talk each other andfigure out how to make the world a better place.

　　Information is very, very important. And in fact, the way you should invade these oppressiveregimes is through information. Then the citizens will take that information and turn theirsocieties into better societies. This is going to continue and to continue and to continue.

　　And what are we going to do with this vastly more popular web? Well, we're building acontemporaneous and historical record that is unparalleled in human history. There are all sortsof interesting possibilities.

　　You'll have megabits of bandwidth 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 aface-to-face meeting across the world. And with automatic translation, you can talk to them eventhough they don't speak your language.

　　When you're traveling in Mongolia, those of you who are graduating and want to take a weekoff, go to Mongolia and you fall off your motorcycle, you can get medical care from a doctor thatdoesn't speak your language because your medical records can be right there. This is life changing,life saving, life fundamental .

　　Imagine a situation, happening very soon, where all of the world's information will betranslated into all the other languages, so we can find out what everybody really thinks. And wecan develop a new insight into what they care about and they can with us. In the next ten years, itwill be possible to have the equivalent of iPods in your purse or on your belt with 85 years ofvideo. Which means that if it's given to you at birth, you're going to be frustrated the whole time,you'll never be done watching all the videos. That's how profound this technological revolution is.

　　You could ask Google the most important questions, like, where are my car keys after all?

　　Because all of a sudden we'll know where everything is and we can make that available .

　　Computers are good at some things, and they are particularly good at these sorts of things.

　　We can detect flu outbreaks, because we can watch what people are doing quicker. We cando things; here's another example. What I really want is while I'm typing a paper, I want thecomputer to tell me what I should have been writing instead. Wouldn't that have been useful?

　　Another product that we've suggested but has not been built yet is the paper lengtheningproject. It adds ten percent to every paper and its recursive . It would have been very useful. Thepoint is that computers really can help you, even though you don't need this anymore now that youare out of college.

　　So if you think of mobile phones as a metaphor, as an extension of you, with imagerecognition, avatars and all the technologies that are coming. You can see that the ability for us tomake our lives even more powerful is all right before us.

　　So what should you do, right now then? Well you should start by listening to George BernardShaw who said that, "all progress depends on the unreasonable man."Graduation gives you the courage to be unreasonable. Don't bother to have a plan. Insteadlet's have some luck. Success is really about being ready for the good opportunities that comebefore you. It's not to have a detailed plan about everything you're going to do, you can't planinnovation or inspiration, but you can be ready for it. And when you see it, you can jump on it andyou can make a difference, as many of the people here today have already done.

　　The important point here is, if you forego your plan you also then have to forego fear. Inmany ways in the last four years and maybe in high school as well, you've been penalized formaking mistakes. From now on, the rewards will gravitate to those who make mistakes and learnfrom them, as the president said.

　　So stop right now. Take a minute and think of something completely new and go work onthat. Take that as your challenge; take that as your opportunity. Whatever you care the most about.

　　So how should you do it, how should you behave ? Well, do it in a group, its much more funanyway. None of us is as smart as all of us. Universities now are good at teaching you how towork 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 of a form of social intelligence; use it. Find a networkof people that care about you and so forth and so on. You can imagine watching Watson andCrick, who discovered the structure of DNA, did it at a university.

　　You can imagine today, there are two people who probably met on Facebook at a university.

　　And they are going to say to each other, "what are you up to right now?" "Oh, I'm finding thesecret of life, then I'm off to a pub. LOL." It's okay. Do it together.

　　But amidst all of this, some truths emerge . Leadership and personality matter a lot.

　　Intelligence, education and analytical reasoning matter. Trust matters. In the network world, trustis the most important currency. Which brings me to my final question. What is, in fact, themeaning of life. And in a world where everything is remembered and everything is kept forever-the world you are in-you need to live for the future and the things that you really, really careabout.

　　And what are those things? Well in order to know that, I hate to say it, but you're going tohave to turn off your computer. You're actually going to have to turn off your phone and discoverall that is human around us.

　　You'll find that people really are the same all around the world. They really do care about thesame things.

　　You'll find that curiosity and enthusiasm and passion are contagious . I see it with thestudents, I see it with the faculty, I see it with the trustees and the president here-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 is a life wasted-don't do it.

　　You'll find that the resilience of a human being and the human spirit is amazing. You'll findtoday that the best chance you will ever have is right now, to start being unreasonable. But whenyou do, listen to me, be nice to your parents and true to your school.

　　Good luck, and thank you very much. Thank you.

　　参考译文

　　不合常理之勇气

　　谢谢大家。首先请允许我祝贺所有的毕业生。大学毕业是一件令人兴奋的事，我还要特别祝福一下毕业生的父母。请记住，他们依然需要你，而且也许今后会听你的话。如果你不太确定我这番话是对谁说的，实际上我要说给家长和孩子们，所以祝贺在座的每一个人。

　　我们的行业应该感谢宾夕法尼亚大学，这不容置疑。1946年，ENIAC就诞生在附近街道的地下室里。而且毫不夸张地说，每一件发明，不管是电脑、手机还是其他设备，其遵循的原理都诞生于此，这里确实是我的世界的中心。

　　63年以后，我们的250名校友在谷歌工作，这是我们最愿意招聘实习生的地方，因为我可以告诉你们，在我面前的这些毕业生的素质是世界上最好的，能成为其中的一员是多么令人振奋。

　　现在，每当我想起宾夕法尼亚大学，我想到的是坚韧的隐含意义，是一种文化，是一种渴望改变的力量。回想20多年前，当时的宾夕法尼亚大学积极地进行改革，对于高中入学申请者来说，他成为这个国家最受欢迎的大学。从这所大学所营造的氛围来说，我们看到文化的作用。你可以真真切切地看到，父母也以送孩子上这所大学为荣。

　　而且我们还有世界上最美味的干酪牛肉三明治，也是很不错的。

　　当我看到你们时，我看到的是互联网的一代，使用谷歌和脸书的一代。而我第一次来到这个体育场，和朋友开了一辆两厢车，看伟大的马蒂·里克利的田径比赛。我想着大概有40年了吧。我们那时候有Tang果汁，而你们现在有红牛。

　　我们的计算机编程语言是BASIC，而你们用JAVA。

　　我们那个年代的录像机制作一小时的视频成本是700美元，而你们使用Youtube，每分钟就可以上传15小时的视频文件。

　　我们通过报纸了解新闻，记得吗？而你们通过博客和推特便知天下事。如果你们谁不知道推特是什么，我可以告诉你们的是，他并不是动物园里听到的那种小鸟叫。

　　我们排队购买射气球游戏，而你们抢的是Wii游戏机。

　　我们不会与人分享在大学里最尴尬的瞬间，而你们却拍下来，传到网上。我期待着在未来的30或40年都能看到这些。

　　我们用的大型计算机内存只有300兆字节，而你们的iPod有120G字节，这是我们当时的500多倍。

　　我们认为“交朋友”是个名词，而你们认为是个动词。

　　我们那时候用电话厅，记得么？你们个个都有手机。

　　我们戴手表，用相机拍照片，看地图找路，听晶体管收音机，而你们用一部手机就能做以上所有的事。

　　我认为电脑和技术的奇迹可以帮助我们改善这个世界。你们也赞同，我们都是对的。

　　但先抛开这一切的奇迹，今天是你们毕业的大日子。

　　现在，你们经过大学的学习，增强了思维分析问题的能力，处理未来人生中所要面对的各种纷繁复杂的信息。但我想说的是，你们毕业后面临的形势并不乐观，但也因此给你们制造了更多的好机会。

　　我用最喜欢的搜索引擎寻找这个问题的答案，“经济大萧条可以刺激什么？”答案就是脆米饼、奶油松糕和啤酒。你们在大学的时候肯定没少吃吧，对不对？

　　所以我认为，因为现今的技术和联系性，你们现在机会要比我们当年在这个座位上的时候要好得多。我们面对的是这样的情况：因为大家的配合，台上和台下的，我们有机会让世界上所有的人都能获取所有的信息。

　　这绝不是不可能的。为什么如此重要？为什么无处不在的信息如此深远？这是一个巨大的平衡器，信息就是力量，人民争夺它，重视它，它可以制衡政治家。如果你是一个独裁者——当然这不可能，因为你是宾夕法尼亚大学的优秀毕业生——你要做的第一件事就是切断所有的通讯联络，使人们无法沟通，也不知道该如何建造美好的明天。

　　信息是非常非常重要的。事实上，瓦解暴虐政体的最好方式就是通过信息。公民将会了解这一切，然后创造更美好的社会。这将会周而复始，生生不息。

　　而我们广受欢迎的互联网能做什么呢？我们正在创建着一个人类历史上前所未有的纪录，这里有各种各样的可能。

　　这个世界上的每个人手中都有宽带资源，知识、娱乐和其他人们感兴趣的内容。你可以跨越空间进行一场面对面的会议，而有了自动翻译，你可以和那些跟你说不同语言的人进行交流。

　　当你在蒙古旅行，比如那些想要在毕业后玩上一个星期的同学，不小心从摩托车上摔了下来，就算那里的医生不说英语，你也可以得到救治，因为你的病历是可以查到的。这一切改变了我们的生活，甚至可以救命，是必不可少的。

　　想象一下，在不久的将来，世界上所有的信息都将被翻译成别的语言，我们就能更加了解彼此。大家会对什么感兴趣以及能做什么，对此我们会有新的真知灼见。也许未来的十年，会有类似iPod的设备，可以放在皮包或者皮带上，里面装载有85年的视频。也就是说如果它是你出生时的礼物，那你就惨了，你终其一生也不可能看完所有的视频。这就是革命的深远意义。

　　你可以问谷歌更重要的问题，比如，我的车钥匙到底放哪儿了？因为突然之间我们将会知道任何东西的所在，我们可以做到这一点。

　　电脑可以在有些方面做得很好，而且电脑很擅长做这种事情。

　　我们可以发现流感疫情，我们可以更快地检测人们的一举一动。另举一个例子，我真正想要的是当我录入一份文件的时候我想要电脑告诉我应该写些什么，是不是会有用？

　　我们想要做而还没有开发的另一个产品是文件延长。这个产品可以给每份文件后面加上百分之十的内容。电脑确实可以帮助你，就算你们现在毕业了离开了学校，你们不再需要这样了。

　　所以，如果你们把手机看作一个象征，你的扩展，它可以拥有图像识别等技术，我们改变生活的能力将更强。

　　那么你们应该做些什么呢。你们应该听听乔治·伯纳恩·肖怎么说：“所有进步都源于不合常理之人。”

　　毕业给了你们追求不合常理之勇气，不用做什么计划，让我们来点运气吧。成功实际上就是抓住面前的好机会。不需要有详尽的计划，因为你无法为创新或者灵感做计划，但你可以为此准备着。等机会来临，你就可以有所作为，就像今天在座的各位所取得的成就。

　　关键在于，如果你放弃了你的计划，也不要害怕。因为过去的四年中，或者高中时代，你已经为自己所犯的错误付出了代价，从现在开始，成就将眷顾那些能从错误中吸取教训的人。

　　所以，现在就停下来。用一分钟时间思考一个全新的事物，并为之努力。将此作为你的挑战，同样也是你的机会。不管你想做的到底是什么。

　　那么，你该怎么做呢？你该如何表现？建立一个团队吧，这样会充满乐趣。三个臭皮匠赛过诸葛亮。大学是教你如何与人共事的，而不是独坐实验室中，要有团队合作。

　　还有推特是集体智慧形式的一个例子，善加利用吧，找到一群和你志趣相投的人。你可以想象看着沃森和克里克在大学里发现了DNA结构。

　　你可以想象今天，两个同所大学的人在脸书上碰面。他们开始交谈。“你现在干吗？”“我在寻找生命的秘密。然后去泡酒吧。哈哈。”这没什么，一起来吧。

　　但是除此之外，还要记得领导能力和人格魅力很重要。智力、教育和分析能力也很重要。另外就是信任。在网络世界里，信任是很重要的。这引出了我最后一个问题。那就是人生的意义。你所处的世界，可以永久保存一切，这需要你为自己的未来和真正关心的事情而活。

　　这些事情是什么呢？要想弄清楚这点，虽然我不想这么说，但你们得关闭电脑。你们得关闭手机，然后发现我们身边的一切。

　　你将发现这个世界上的人们真的没有什么不同。他们关心相同的事情。

　　你将发现好奇心、热情和激情的共鸣。我在学生们身上看到了，在教职工身上、在董事会和主席身上也看到了，保持下去，你将受用终生。

　　你将会发现没有什么比扶着小孙子迈出他人生的第一步更重要，你会发现培养心态是浪费生命，别这样做。

　　你会发现人类和精神的坚韧是多么神奇。你会发现你们现在拥有最好的机会，所以开始挑战常理吧。但听我说，要善待你的父母，忠于你的母校。

　　祝你们好运，再次感谢大家。