The Last Lecture: People versus Things

I came across this video completely by chance -- but that should be no surprise, because at the moment it's a version of one the most viral videos on the Net.

This is virtual reality pioneer Randy Pausch, who is dying from cancer, reprising his inspirational "Last Lecture" on the Oprah Show (screened on 22 October, 2007). You can see the full-length version of this short Oprah Show reprise at www.cs.virginia.edu/robins/Randy.

Randy is also a human-computer interaction researcher, co-founder of CMU's Entertainment Technology Center (www.etc.cmu.edu), and creator of the Alice software project (www.alice.org).

It's a short, moving but celebratory and inspiring piece of media which I hope you don't mind me re-posting here, but I think we could all do with more Tiggers than Eyores (and you'll have to view the video to get that reference).

Randy says he remains "flattered and embarrassed" by all the recent attention for his Last Lecture. "I am told that, including abridged versions, over six million people have viewed the lecture online.

"The lecture really was for my kids, but if others are finding value in it, that is wonderful. But rest assured; I'm hardly unique. Send your kids to Carnegie Mellon and the other professors here will teach them valuable life lessons long after I'm gone."

This link to the video below on Google will also take you to links on his lectures on building virtual worlds. This link takes you to the original "Last Lecture".

Related Links
• You can support research into curing pancreatic cancer via the Lustgarten foundation, and/or the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network.
• Randy's book about his "Last Lecture" is at www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/Randy_Book.html
• High-resolution downloadable versions of Randy's videos can be found at www.cs.virginia.edu/robins/Randy

Update, 25 July 2008: Randy Pausch died today, aged 47. The Los Angeles Times (among many others) posted a tribute to him, noting his book, The Last Lecture, has sold over two million copies and is being published in 29 languages. Memorial donations may be made to the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network, www.pancan.org, or to Carnegie-Mellon's Randy Pausch Memorial Fund, www.cmu.edu/giving/pausch.

Second Life Star Trek

Okay, this is just so wrong, but not entirely unexpected. Seems some creative types in the Second Life virtual community have got the drop on Perpetual Entertainment and produced their own Star Trek-styled avatars. (There's quite a lot of Trek stuff in SL, actually, including Trek City and a Trek Museum, and there seems to be a lot of interest in comics and superheroes, too. But on a quick tryout, I didn't see anyone running around in a V for Vendetta mask).

The sequences come as apart of a show posted on Blip.tv that forms a general reveiew of events in Second Life which includes the news that Coke are running a competition among SL residents to design a Coke vending machine.

I gather the commercialisation of Second Life isn't an entirely popular development: although people are happy to design their own cars they'd much rather teleport around SL (because it's quicker) or fly (because it's cooler): so when a company like Toyota provides their latest models inworld, the take up isn't that great. Toyota and other companies would, it appears, be better off, say, going off the wall and instead of creating something based on their real world product, invent something that was way out there -- like a Toyota-branded jet bike -- with minimal branding but just enough so as to be noticed if anyone was interested. It's all about making constructive contributions to what's become a very involved online social community, something I recall only too well from my time working behind the scenes on one of the earlier avatar communities, vzscifi, which was the UK arm of vzones.com.