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Child-like Wonder: The Lessons of Randy Pausch

Much has already been written about Randy Pausch’s moving “last lecture” earlier this month at Carnegie Mellon University and I won’t repeat the many accolades that his talk has already received, I merely want to encourage those who haven’t watched his speech to take an hour and view it. It is a moving testament to what I call in my book “the power of play.”

Pausch discusses how his parents encouraged and cultivated his creativity by allowing him to paint and draw on his bedroom walls. As a favor after he dies (Pausch has pancreatic cancer), he asks only this: “If your kid wants to paint his or her bedroom, let’em do it.” Throughout the remainder of his talk, Pausch then discusses the importance of holding on to our childhood dreams and he pleads with the audience to “never lose the child-like wonder” that once resided in all of us.

The best evidence of the importance of this message, however, is Pausch’s own life. As a result of his efforts to make virtual reality technology available to the masses, he has helped over 1 million children learn how to write computer code and create new virtual reality environments—many of which he freely admits are beyond even his skill. In essense, Pausch has successfully unleashed the creative juices of millions of kids.

Pausch is not done and his legacy will continue to grow long after he has died. That is because Carnegie Mellon is now replicating his unique “edutainment” methodology at university campuses around the world. As Pausch said he wanted to create something that is “infinitely scaleable.” He has now done that and for his extraordinary legacy he deserves to be honored as the first-ever recipient of my “exponential educator” award.

Jack Uldrich is a writer, public speaker and host of jumpthecurve.net. He is the author of seven books, including Jump the Curve and The Next Big Thing is Really Small: How Nanotechnology Will Change the Future of Your Business, and speaks frequently on future trends, innovation, change management, nanotechnology, robotics, RFID technology and executive leadership to the education industry.

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