Alan Kay, '05 Columbia College Commencement

it

is my pleasure to present to you LMK  the

degree Doctor of Letters honoris  causa with all

the rights and privileges  appertaining here to

thank you so much  now

honorary degrees are nice but the  real ones

that you've earned today are  much nicer so let me congratulate you

commencement

talks are usually full of  advice but

there is such a wide  diversity of human styles that

each  person really needs something special  there's

a great scene in the movie city  slickers where Billy

Crystal plays a guy  in a midlife crisis

who goes on a cattle  drive to find himself

Jack Palance is  the old cowboy who says you

city folks  just don't get it the

secret of life is  just one thing

and billy crystal says  what is it what is it

the old cowboy  said that's what you

have to find out so  I'm going to avoid giving

advice in this  talk

there are even jokes about  commencement

Doonesbury did a Sunday  comic about it

President Bush thought it  would be funny to point

out that one can  go far in the US with a sea average

in

a commencement a few weeks ago he  said literally

look what I've  accomplished with my fluency and  language

and grammar

what a role model

but

mr. books Bush's remarks do point up

  the enormous distinction between just  getting

a degree and getting a real  education

the shocking start of

real education  happens when you realize that

you not  only don't know very much

compared to  the good stuff that's known but

what you do know is known in a very weak  way and

the problem with starting

on  this path of education this this doesn't  change

as you get better educated the

more you learn the more you realize you  don't know and

the more you realize you  understand it in a week

way people say  but

I want to know everything and

I want  to be absolutely sure of it a

lot of  people do this by

living inside their  heads with stories they choose to

  believe in but it uses an

ancient  version of know that really means

the  same as believe and it misses most of

  the important ideas about

400 years ago  a new

way of living outside of our heads  a little bit

was invented science

changed the meaning of know so  drastically that

it would have been  better

if a new word had been coined we

  still used no science

fiction writer  Robert Heinlein gave us a Martian

word  for this new way of knowing called it  grok

in part grok

understand things in a way that  minimizes

our human genetic and cultural  biases

this is known a long time ago

the  talmud says we see things not as they

  are but as we are rock

means to try to  see things

not as we are but from  stronger points

of view the most  critical

ideas of humanity have happened  when somebody

is realized that the world  is not as it seems that

most of the  important stuff is quite invisible

to  our nervous system and belief structures

  this

is something you know about because  making the invisible a little more  visible

is what artists have always  tried to do

  and grokking

became the newest of the  Arts

was one of the great art forms

of  the last century

another early part of  this new way

of thinking happened when  democratic

Republic's like ours were  invented that tried to

take into account  our biases and prejudices

in 18th  century America

the title of Tom

Paine's  Common Sense was a play

on words because  it was really

an argument against  common-sense ideas about

governments for  example having a king in those

days  seemed quite natural it

was a natural  extension of having a father be

the head  of a family but pain said

and let  instead of having the King be the law

  let us have the law be the king and

he  meant that people can invent a form

of  government that is better for

most  people than what seems natural Tom Paine

  really meant uncommon sense

Thomas  Jefferson at a letter in

1820 said I  know of no safe depository

of the  ultimate powers of

the society but the  people themselves and

if we think them  not enlightened

enough to exercise

their  control with a wholesome discretion the

  remedy is not to take it from them but

  to inform their discretion by education  this

is what education in America really  means

inform their discretion by

  education means not helping Americans  learn a job

or facts but helping them

  learn to grok few

years back my wife  Bonnie mcbird who

incidentally was the  original writer of the movie

Tron that's  how we met

she

had a nice argument with Vice  President Al

Gore over the haves and  have-nots

he was worried about the  digital divide

in the United States but  she pointed

out that most of the  important knowledge of

the world was  still in books and available

in free  public libraries she

said that the real  haves and have-nots are those

who have  or have not the discretion to make

use  of these free resources the

real start  of education is to gain that discretion

  a survey a few years ago indicated

that  only about twenty percent of american  adults today

can read and understand the

  simply written pamphlet common sense by

  tom paine this includes many college

  graduates so the safe repository

of the  ultimate powers of society is not

so  safe these days our

main job as adults  now usually

that I found that the most  popular advice in a

commencement talk  was to follow your

bliss or do what you  really

love and so forth and that is  actually good

advice but it's it's to  individual

it's two

in cognizant of the

fact that we live in a society it's our  main job as

adults especially as college  graduates

is to try to help all of the  children of

the world grow up to think  better meaning

grok better than we do  and

we were involved in the new

media  can make a big difference here that's

  you Nicholas Negroponte and

I Nicholas  is the founder of the Media Lab at

MIT  he and I are involved in

a serious  project underway right now

to make and  distribute an under

$100 laptop

for all of the children in the world  that has

multiple billions of children

this is possible to do

mcluhan pointed  out that we shape media

but then the  media turn around and reshape

us so what  kind of content will

you make for this  new medium

Nicholas and I are making the  machine but

it's up to you to make the  content what kind of content will you

  make for the children of the world

30  years ago

I attended a conference on  mind and body

held at the Zen Center in  California

the monks would often

clasp  their hands together and pause

for a  moment

eventually worked up the courage  to ask them why

they did this they said

  Buddhists believe that the world of the

  senses is an illusion which most of

the  time we have to pretend is real like  when

of we're walking into a path of a  bus

maybe an illusion but we better get  out of the way

but during the day there  are occasions

at a meal

starting to do  work at a ceremony

like this where we  pause for a moment to

reflect that we  are incredibly finite and limited

beings  and reality

is much larger than we can  take in at

any one time I think this is  a wonderful practice

to pause several  times a day and

think for a second about  all

the things we aren't thinking about

  so congratulations again and

thank you  very much for pausing

to grok the real  significance of this

"