Really achieving your childhood dreams - Randy Pausch

I was alerted to this webcast by Rick and Emilee and I have to say that this is the second time that I have watched a webcast and wished I was present in the audience (the first being Noam Chomsky's presentation in UM). This lecture and the Chomsky one were well worth the hour and a half I spent watching them.

This is a capture of the webcast lecture given by Prof. Randy Pausch of the Entertainment Technology Center at Carnegie Mellon University. This was advertised to be Prof. Pausch's last lecture. What makes this lecture even more poignant is the back story of Prof. Pausch's battle with cancer and how he realizes the fact that he doesn't have much time left.

Prof. Pausch's lecture was at once inspiring, a little sad and renewed my faith in the field Human-Computer Interaction. Those of you working in the field of HCI know that you can easily lose the forest for the trees. Prof. Pausch's lecture tells you to stop for a while and savour the forest that you are in. And more importantly to work to grow that forest to inspire others. I have already recommended this lecture to several friends and thought that I would share it on this blog as well. You don't have to be in the field of HCI to appreciate Prof. Pausch's message.

(As a footnote, I managed to get this webcast as a torrent. I have shared it on the blog because I thought that it was a very inspiring lecture. I do not own the rights to the video and would happily take it down if asked to.)