--- title: Virginia Tech: Eric Schmidt Graduation Speech 2015 description: Eric Schmidt gave this commencement speech at Virginia Tech canonical: https://time.com/collections/advice-for-2015-grads/3889977/eric-schmidt-graduation-speech-vt/ article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2015-05-19T21:40:45.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:25:38.864Z article:section: Ideas og:title: Eric Schmidt to Grads: You Can Write the Code for All of Us og:description: Eric Schmidt gave this commencement speech at Virginia Tech og:url: https://time.com/collections/advice-for-2015-grads/3889977/eric-schmidt-graduation-speech-vt/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltd4cbc13a3da04550/698850dd2dce0184069e3cd3/466716374-copy.jpg?branch=production&width=594&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: Eric Schmidt to Grads: You Can Write the Code for All of Us og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Eric Schmidt to Grads: You Can Write the Code for All of Us twitter:description: Eric Schmidt gave this commencement speech at Virginia Tech twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltd4cbc13a3da04550/698850dd2dce0184069e3cd3/466716374-copy.jpg?branch=production&width=594&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 --- May 19, 2015 # Eric Schmidt to Grads: You Can Write the Code for All of Us > Sponsored content. 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Terms and conditions apply. * Savings buckets are a feature of Ally Bank's Savings Account. * No ATM fees from Ally Bank at Allpoint and Moneypass ATMs plus we reimburse for fees charged by other ATM owners nationwide up to $10 per statement cycle. * Early direct deposit offers eligible direct deposits up to two days sooner. * Spending buckets are a feature of Ally Bank's Spending Account. ## Video: Eric Schmidt Speaks at Virginia Tech Commencement 2015 [Watch (HLS stream): Eric Schmidt Speaks at Virginia Tech Commencement 2015](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/TzFsSPJ7.m3u8) (17:00)  _Published 2015-05-20. Eric Schmidt Speaks at Virginia Tech Commencement 2015_ by [Eric Schmidt](https://time.com/author/eric-schmidt/) ## Eric Schmidt Schmidt is the former CEO of Google, CEO of Relativity Space, and the co-founder of Schmidt Sciences.  Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt speaks at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington on March 18, 2015. Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt speaks at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington on March 18, 2015. Win McNamee—Getty Images It’s great to be back here on campus, back in Blacksburg. Its an honor to be here. Some of my fondest memories are of this town, of this campus. When my dad taught here­­those were some of the best days of my life. Those were times that defined my childhood. I remember riding my bike to the Lyric theater when I was about twelve years old. I’d leave it outside the theater, up against a tree. I came out one day, after a movie, to find it had been stolen. I went right into the police station to report this heinous crime. When I got in there, they had the bike in jail, locked up…for, as they said, “safe keeping.” That, right there, is what this town is about. It’s about a sense of community, an unerring support and protection of those around you, those who are fortunate enough to share this wonderful place with you. It’s powerful and has stuck with me for all these years. When you return to a place of intense memories, and look around, you think it’s the place that has changed so much. But in truth, it is you are the one who has changed much more. Your memories will be vivid, things will look a little different, but feel very much the same. This town especially makes me think of my father, who taught here for so long. He was such a role model, such an influence on my life—­­he taught me so much, gave me so much. Your parents, in their own way, all do the same thing. And this stadium is filled with people who have gotten you to where you are right now, parents, brothers, sisters, husbands, wives, partners, grandparents. They have made sacrifices. They have given you laughter and love when you needed it most. They have encouraged and inspired you. They have taught you more than you know. And today, when you walk across this stage and grab that diploma, they will cheer louder than any of you think possible. So, take the time now to look at this stadium full of people and cheer for them. Cheer as loud as you can. Say thank you, for you wouldn’t be here without them. Love them. Let me start by offering you a quote. It’s not mine, but I think it goes to the heart of your time here, and your time to come: “I choose to live, not just exist.” See, you come from a long line­­—a rich history—­­of people who have come to this campus and decided to live, not just exist­­to stand up and speak out and act and do and make and build and create. Obviously plenty of stellar engineers, but also writers, artists, business pioneers … two governors … a few astronauts … war heroes … the first man to fly across the North Pole … the first woman to be registered as a professional engineer in the state of Virginia … the guy who holds the single ­day record for Jeopardy winnings … even a former basketball star who is the father of the new reigning NBA MVP. Trust me, those of us in San Francisco really appreciate that last one. And, now … you follow. It’s your turn. Yes, ​you—​­­sitting there now, baking in the sun, thinking about the party later, possibly nursing a hangover, saying to yourself, wow—­­that’s a lot of pressure. What can ​I​ do? I can’t answer that, specifically for each of you. Though I do kind of doubt any of you will be NBA MVPs, what I can say is that this place has prepared you in ways you don’t even realize now to follow in the Hokie tradition, to serve, to succeed, to see the world you want … and to make it real. It’s not just what you’ve learned in these hallowed classrooms or libraries. It’s every time you hiked the Cascades in the freezing cold … every time you sat at the edge of the War Memorial and watched the sunset … every time you went to the Drillfield to play in the snow … or sang karaoke on a Tuesday at “TOTS” … every time you have sat together in this stadium, on a brisk Fall Saturday, and jumped around to “Enter Sandman” blasting out through the speakers … These are the times you’ve learned the most. These are the times you’ve become who you are. THESE are the times you have chosen to live, not just existed. Every class has its own unique challenges. Every class enters a history that, up to that point, is being written ​for ​it. This is no different. What ​is ​different, though, is the chance each generation has to take that history and write it larger—­­or, for those of you engineers, to program it better. And, on that score, your generation’s opportunities are greater than any generation’s in modern history. You’re connecting to each other in ways those who came before you could never dream of. And you’re using those connections to strengthen the invisible ties that hold humanity together, and to deepen our understanding of the world around us. You are emblems of the sense of possibility that will define our new age. You can write the code for all of us. What’s the first thing you do when you get up? Check your phone? Read some email, comb through your social networks? If you are awake, you are online. You are connected. Some of you are probably texting your friends right now. Tweeting this speech. Instagramming all of this. Changing your status. I know: “It’s complicated.” All that might not seem like much. Ho­-hum, mundane—­­that’s just daily life. But, please, graduates: Don’t take that power for granted. What you carry with you every day can change the world . About 40 years ago, when I was in Blacksburg, I worked in the computer center. The computer was an IBM 370/158\. It had 1 megabit of space, 1 megahertz of processing power. I was describing it to someone the other day who asked if it was a room with computers on a table, like a lab. No! It WAS the room­­—a giant air­-conditioned room. THAT was the computer! It must have cost around $10 million. Now, take a break from SnapChatting to look at what you have in your pockets. Probably 128 gigabits (128,000 ­times more than back then) … for $500. It’s 20,000 times cheaper and 100,000 times faster, so it’s 2 ​trillion​times more valuable than what I had access to just 40 years ago. Trillion­­—with a T. And, it’s not just the massive change we’ve seen in four decades. I was here in 1999, delivering the commencement. At that time, Google was one year old. I didn’t work there. Amazon was pretty much only a bookstore. There was no Facebook. No Twitter. No iTunes. Napster reigned. That wasn’t that long ago! That’s within your lifetimes. So much change, so little time. Modern innovation is much faster than at any previous point in history. I mentioned how much I have changed earlier. Well, in the 50 or so years since I lived in Blacksburg, the confluence and scale of knowledge has been what has changed me. We went from knowing almost nothing except our friends and the books we had on our shelves … to knowing almost everything about everything. No one really could have predicted that much change in such a short period. But your path will be even more dynamic­­. The next 50 years are even more unpredictable, but the thing that will change the most is yourself and the reason is the profound increase in intelligence and assistance available to you as you define their lives. It will change the way you approach your career, yes. But also what type of mother and father you are, how you learn, how you have fun…how you ​choose to live​. Thanks to software and computer science, we now have incredible tools at our disposal. In the next few years, and beginning now, computerized data analysis will become a profound tool that will be up to you, the new generation of great minds, to develop. The nature of a new tool is just that —­ it’s there for you to use, in whatever way you decide to use it. And with these new tools comes new responsibility. But I know you have an advantage—­­a competitive edge—­ you have an innate mastery of technology, an ability to build and foster connections that no generation before you ever possessed. You are the Internet generation. You grew up online. You are the first generation to know nothing else but an ability to connect with the world with press of a button. People bemoan a generation who grew up living life in front of screens, always connected to ​something or someone. Those people are ​wrong​. The fact that we are all connected now is a blessing, not a curse, and you can solve many problems in the world as a result. With the proliferation of the Internet, and with the digitization of data, a world’s worth of information is perpetually at your fingertips. This opens the door to some fascinating questions for the next generation to resolve. How will we process all of this data? Will we know to leverage it correctly? Will we find the right balance between letting the data lead us, and following our inherently creative, brilliant human intuition? In the digital age, analysis and interpretation are even more important than factual knowledge. As graduates of Virginia Tech, you are better poised than anyone to both understand this, and to bring it to bright, gleaming life. Now, here’s the deal: Yes, it’s true, we have all this knowledge literally at our fingertips. But, just because we know much more than we used to doesn’t mean our problems just go away. The future doesn’t just ​happen​. It’s not etched or written or coded anywhere. There’s no algorithm or formula that says technology will do X … so Y is sure to happen. Technology doesn’t work on its own. It’s just a tool. You are the ones who harness its power. It is up to you to know your environment and learn to use the new tools at your disposal in the smartest, most effective way possible. A computer is capable of identifying insights that we wouldn’t know to look for, by sheer brute force of how much data it can analyze, and from how many different angles (all with astonishing speed). This is something we cannot do ourselves, and we should take advantage. But, the truth is, there’s plenty we ​can​and should do ourselves, plenty a computer cannot do for us. Intuition, compassion, creativity—­­these are things we do better than machines. These are things you, having sharpened those innate skills here in Blacksburg, can put to use in service of a better day for us all. We are on the cusp of a new and much larger scale of innovation, similar to the onset of the Industrial revolution. Before that, human growth and development was quite limited, but with industrialization came economic growth, prosperity and a vast increase in human life and health. Which is nothing compared to what you’re about to live through. You don’t have to dream too hard to picture the not-­too-­distant-­future: A smart wall will wake you up exactly at the time you need to get up. A car will drive itself to your office, as you catch up on the world around you. The human brain will be mapped. New systems will be developed to remove CO2 and generate fuel, saving the planet. Pediatric cancer will be nearly eliminated, saving the lives of children everywhere. We don’t have to wait 40 years. This stuff is coming soon. But someone actually has to make it happen. Which is where you come in. Computers won’t just do it without us. None of this happens without you guys. We need you now. You are the ones who can build this, you are the ones who can take these dreams and make them real. You are the ones who need to choose to live, not just exist. People are counting on you. ​I​ am counting on you. ​The future you are building is mine, too. With that in mind, I ask you to do the following: Be curious: Ask a lot of big questions. And then go out and try to find the answers. Define your life as to what you do for others: What you do is not nearly as important as how you do it. Be persistent: ​When someone says you’re thinking ​too big​… be smart enough not to listen. When someone says the odds are ​too small​… be dumb enough to give it a shot. And when someone asks, how can you do ​that​?… look them in the eyes and say, ​I went to Virginia Tech. I am a HOKIE. I will figure it out. There is too much power in your hands. Too much possibility…for the next 40 years, for the next decade, for tomorrow. Now­­—hearing it in Nicole’s speech earlier, and President Sands’, I know how important it is, if you’re going to be in this stadium, to have “Enter Sandman” as part of the proceedings. Which is why I chose that quote: I want to choose to live, not just exist. I didn’t want to quote some great ancient philosopher or Nobel Laureate. I didn’t want to go with an old inventor or modern technologist. I wanted to quote James Hetfield. He is the lead singer of Metallica. He said that, originally. I figured, Metallica is with you every time you come to this stadium, and they should be now too. Choosing to live means: Life is not lived in the glow of a monitor. Life is not a series of status updates. Life is not about your friend count—­­it’s about the friends you can count ​on​. Engage with the world around you … feel … and taste … and smell … and hug what’s there, right in front of you­­not what’s a click away. Don’t just push a button saying you “Like” something that someone is up to. Go tell them yourself. Life is about who you love, how you live, it’s about who you travel through the world with. It’s about these people here, with whom you have shared so much. Life is about much more than just existing. So, please, class of 2015: go out there and choose to live. You have accomplished so much to get here. But it pales in comparison to where you’ll go next. I am excited for where you are going once you walk off this stage. Grab that degree and … you’re off. You’re off to a new world. You’re off to new life. So, take each others’ hands. You’re off to never-­never land. Congratulations to you all. _Read more 2015 commencement speeches:_ [_Alan Alda to Grads: Everything in Life Takes Time_](http://time.com/3889343/alan-alda-graduation-speech-cmu) [_Bernard Harris to Grads: You Are an Infinite Being With Infinite Possibilities_](http://time.com/3892197/bernard-harris-graduation-speech-wpi/) [_Bill Nye to Grads: Change the World_](http://time.com/3882613/bill-nye-graduation-speech-rutgers-university/) [_Chris Matthews to Grads: ‘Make Them Say No. Never Say No to Yourself’_](http://time.com/3895685/chris-matthews-commencement-address/) [_Colin Powell to Grads: Learn to Lead_](http://time.com/3889524/colin-powell-graduation-speech-2015/) [_Ed Helms to Grads: Define Yourselves_](http://time.com/3891310/ed-helms-graduation-speech-2015/) [_Eric Schmidt to Grads: You Can Write the Code for All of Us_](http://time.com/3889977/eric-schmidt-graduation-speech-vt) [_Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel to Grads: ‘This Is the World We Were Born Into, and We Are Responsible for It’_](http://time.com/3881609/snapchat-evan-spiegel-graduation-speech/) [_Gwen Ifill to Grads: If You See Something, Do Something_](http://time.com/3891033/gwen-ifill-graduation-speech-utica/) [_GE CEO Jeff Immelt to Grads: Become a Force for Change_](http://time.com/3888086/jeff-immelt-graduation-speech-siena/) [_Ian McEwan to Grads: Defend Free Speech_](http://time.com/3883212/ian-mcewan-graduation-speech-dickinson/) [_Joe Plumeri to Grads: Go Out and Play in Traffic_](http://time.com/3896557/joe-plumeri-graduation-speech-nyls/) [_Jon Bon Jovi to Grads: Lead By Example_](http://time.com/3892791/bon-jovi-graduation-speech-rutgers-camden/) [_Jorge Ramos’ Message for Journalists: Take a Stand_](http://time.com/3881590/jorge-ramos-usc-commencement/) [_Joyce Carol Oates to Grads: Be Stubborn and Optimistic_](http://time.com/3893106/joyce-carol-oates-to-grads-be-stubborn-and-optimistic/) [_Katie Couric to Grads: Get Yourself Noticed_](http://time.com/3882654/katie-couric-graduation-speech-2015/) [_Ken Burns to Grads: Set Things Right Again_](http://time.com/3890954/ken-burns-graduation-speech-wustl/) [_Kenneth Cole to Grads: Find Your Voice_](http://time.com/3889495/kenneth-cole-class-speech-emory) [_Madeleine Albright to Grads: The World Needs You_](http://time.com/3882439/madeleine-albright-tufts-graduation-speech/) [_Mark Ruffalo to Grads: Buck the System_](http://time.com/3883345/mark-ruffalo-award-speech-dickinson/) [_Matthew McConaughey to Grads: Always Play Like an Underdog_](http://time.com/3881954/matthew-mcconaughey-graduation-speech-university-of-houston/) [_Maya Rudolph to Grads: Create Your Own Destiny_](http://time.com/3883091/maya-rudolph-tulane-university-graduation-speech/) [_Mellody Hobson to Grads: Set Your Sights High_](http://time.com/3889937/mellody-hobson-graduation-speech-usc/) [_Meredith Vieira to Grads: Be the Left Shark_](http://time.com/3882465/meredith-vieira-graduation-speech-boston-university/?iid=time%5Fspeed) [_Michelle Obama to Grads: Shape the Revolution_](http://time.com/3895761/michelle-obama-to-grads-shape-the-revolution/) [_Mitt Romney to Grads: America Needs You to Serve_](http://time.com/3882769/mitt-romney-graduation-speech-saint-anselm-college/) [Natalie Portman to Grads: Carve Your Own Path](http://time.com/3899747/natalie-portman-to-grads-carve-your-own-path/) [_President Obama to Grads: We Should Invest in People Like You_](http://time.com/3889866/barack-obama-graduation-speech-lati/) [_President Obama to Cadets: Lead the Way on Fighting Climate Change_](http://time.com/3891078/barack-obama-graduation-speech-uscga/) [_Salman Rushdie to Grads: Try to Be Larger Than Life_](http://time.com/3889267/salman-rushdie-graduation-speech-emory/) [_Samantha Power to Grads: Start Changing the World By ‘Acting As If’_](http://time.com/3883303/samantha-power-graduation-speech-upenn/) [_Stephen Colbert to Grads: You Are Your Own Professor Now_](http://time.com/3883513/stephen-colbert-graduation-speech-wfu/) [_Tim Cook to Grads: Tune Out the Cynics_](http://time.com/3882479/tim-cook-graduation-speech-gwu/) ## Transcript Thank you very much mister president it's a fantastic honor to be here I cannot think of anything more important than education and in the 50 years I've been associated with Blacksburg, this university has gotten stronger, better under the great leadership behind me, and under your energy going forward. It's interesting for me. It's great to be back, right? To bring back the memories, it's an honor to be here. My father taught here which is why I grew up here. Those were some of the best days of my life. And I remembered riding my bicycle, of course I was 12 so I didn't have a car. So I rode my bicycle around town. And I rode it and I used to go to the Lyric theater, which is still here. And I would watch movies, of course. And I would park my bicycle in front of the police station. Because I figured if you're gonna park your bicycle, we didn't have locks back then, you should park it someplace safe. So I come out of the movie, and my bicycle has been stolen. And I'm incredibly upset. All right, it's my only possession. And so I go into the police and they sit there, and I report my bike is stolen. And then, they take me upstairs, and they have safe keeped my bicycle in jail, just in case I had lost it. That's the town that I grew up in. That's the values of Blacksburg. It's the sense of community and the support that we've all talked about. And those values are powerful and they've stuck with me for so many years. Now it's interesting that when you return to a place where you have intense memories, you're struck by how much it's changed. Blacksburg, so much more prosperous, so much better, so much investment, so many smarter people. But the truth is when you go back to a place that you grew up in, it is you who have changed so much more. And that the key thing about life is how you change based on the things around you. And this town makes me think of my father who taught here for so long, and he was such a role model for me. What's interesting in looking at you and thinking about sitting in the chairs and not being too hot, I hope, is that your parents in the way did this too. They have a memory of your lives and your birth, and the stadium is filled with people who have gotten you to where you are right now. Parents, brothers, sisters, husbands, wives Grandparents. They've made the sacrifices. They've given you laughter and love when you needed it most. They've encouraged and inspired you. They've taught you more than you know, and you don't fully appreciate how profoundly good your family and your parents are. And you will as you reproduce and you have families and children and so forth. And today when you walk across the stage, I want you to grab the diploma and remember that when they cheer, they're cheering louder than you possibly could imagine. They're so incredibly proud of you. So take a minute and look to the left and took to the right. And thank your parents. And thank your family. Right now. [ APPLAUSE ] You should love them, they love you. Now I want to start by offering a quote. It's not mine, but I think it goes to the heart of your time here, and your time to come. I choose to live, not just exist. You come from a long line, a rich history of people who've come to this campus, and decided to live, not just to exist. To stand up and speak out, and to make the most of their lives. Now obviously, plenty of great people, stellar engineers, writers, artists, pioneers. Two governors, some astronauts, war heroes. The first man to fly across the North Pole. The first woman registered as a professional engineer in the state of Virginia. The guy who owns the single A record for Jeopardy winnings. And even the former basketball star who's father of the new reigning NBA mvp. Now trust me. Those of us in San Francisco care a lot about this one. And now you follow. It's your turn. Yes, you sitting here, baking in the sun, thinking about a party, perhaps hungover based on some of the earlier celebrations, saying to yourself, now that's a lot of pressure. What can I do? What can I do as I graduate? I can't answer specifically for each of you. I don't know that each and every one of you would be an NBA most valuable player, but I can tell you that this place has a way of preparing you to realize now in a tradition that you've heard from the speakers before me. To serve, to succeed, and to build a world that you want. And it's not just that what you learn in the classrooms. It's the hiking in the Cascades, in the freezing cold. And I remember it well. Every time you sat at the edge of the war memorial and watched the sunset. Ever since you went to drill field. And I played in the snow, and I know what it was like. Or sang karaoke at TOTS. Every time you have sat together in this stadium, watched a fantastic football team. On a brisk fall Saturday for listening to Enter Sandman. Those are the times I think you've learned just as much. Those are the times you have become who you are. Every class has its own unique challenges. Every class enters a history that up to the point has been written for you. This is no different. But what is different now is that your generation has to take that history and write it longer and larger. Think of it as from the engineers, so you can program it better. And on that score, your generations opportunities are far greater for all the reasons that you can think of. You're connecting to each other in ways That it was not possible before. You're using those connections to strengthen the invisible ties that hold humanity together. The connections are what make us human. They're the things that make us stronger. These emblems of the sense of possibility that will define our new age, you literally write the code for all of us. Now, what do you all do when you get up? You check your phone. Of course. You read some email. You comb through all your social networks. If you're awake, you're online. And if you wake up in the middle of the night, you check your email and you go back to sleep. You're connected. And some of you are probably texting right now, tweeting this speech, Instagraming everything, changing your status. I know. Your life is always complicated. Right? Now, that may not be so much, it may be mundane. It's daily life for you. But don't take that power for granted, what you carry with you every day can change the world. When I was in college, I spent the summers working at Burruss Hall in the Computer Center. And the computer center consisted of one computer called an IBM 37158 and it had a megabit of memory and a megahertz of processing power. And I was talking to somebody the other day and they said oh it's a room with a computer and I said no you don't understand, the computer was as big as the room, right, and what's interesting, and it probably cost around 10 million dollars. Now take a break from Snapchatting and just listen to these numbers. In your phone, you've probably got 64 128 gigabytes of computation for, say, $ 500 plus or minus, unsubsidized. That's 20, 000 times cheaper and 100, 000 times faster, so it's two trillion times More useful than the computer I used here 40 years ago. This is very distressing. Now it's not just this massive change that you've seen. I was here in 1999 and I delivered a similar commencement to a much smaller and less succesful university And then I realized, I was looking it up and I realized that it's not on YouTube, because YouTube wasn't invented. And I didn't have a smartphone cuz they weren't invented. Google was one year old and I didn't work there. Amazon was still only a bookstore. Facebook had not been founded. You couldn't use Twitter. Napster [ UNKNOWN ] Hm. And of course, Google Maps didn't exist so I couldn't find any. I sort of navigated the usual way, by maps, the old kind. So, when you think about it, there's a lot of change. All right. We take this stuff for granted, and modern innovation is as a result Happening much faster than ever. So in the 50 years or so that I've been associated here, the confluence and scale of knowledge is what changed me. We went from knowing almost nothing except our friends and the books we had on our shelves. All of our information about the area was what our friends told us or what the Teachers told us, and now you can know almost everything about everything. You can read the rich history of the New River Valley and the rich and impressive accomplishments of VPI and Tech and so forth and all of the things going on in southwestern Virginia and all of the politics of Virginia now, just on your smartphone. If you change the way you approach things, then you have an opportunity to change the way your life begins. In other words, you choose to live this way. And I think that thanks to computer science, we have a lot more data than we've ever done. Computer as data analysis will become a profound tool that will be up to you Literally the next generation of great minds to develop. And the nature of a new tool, it's there for you to use however you want to use it. And if you don't use it, and you don't use it right, you'll **** up. So figure out a way to take advantage of these tools. And because you have this innate mastery of technology which comes from being born in the digital generation. You're the internet generation. You grew up online. You're the first generation to literally grow up with this is ubiquitous. People, it's interesting, that I hear lots of people bemoaning this generation that specifically you all who grew up living life in front of computer screens, always connected to something or someone. I'm absolutely convinced that these critics are wrong. The fact that we are now all connected is a blessing. It's a blessing for safety. It's a blessing for education. It's a blessing for world peace. It's a blessing for economic growth. It's a blessing for your business futures and so forth and so on. And with the development of the Internet and the digitization of data, a world's worth Of information is perpetually now at your fingertips. This opens the door to all sorts of interesting questions. How are we gonna process all of this data? How will we leverage it all correctly? Machine learning and the other technologies that are at the forefront of what those of us in my industry do, how will you use it? How will you use it for good? How will we find the right balance Between letting the data lead us and following our inherently creative and brilliant human intuition, represented by you, here on the floor. It's interesting that in the digital age, analysis and interpretation are even more important than factual knowledge. At Tech, I think you're better poised than anyone to understand this. You've lived it and bring it out in a bright. And gleaming life. So here's the deal. It's true that we have the knowledge at our fingertips. But just because we know so much doesn't mean our problems go away. The future doesn't just happen, right? It's not etched, or written, or coded anywhere. There's no formula or algorithm that says that technology will do x. And if you do x, y will happen. The technology doesn't work on it's own it's just a tool. You're the ones who harness its power, you're the one who'll lead it. It's in our service, and in particular in your service. It's up to you to know your environment and to use these new tools at your disposal in the smartest and most effective ways possible. A computer is obviously Capable of identifying insights that we would never wanna know to look for. By sheer brute force and so forth. But there something we cannot do ourselves. But the truth is, there's plenty we can do, and we need to do for ourselves. This intuition, compassion and creativity. These are the things that make us special. These are the things that we do as That much better than machines and it defines us as humans. These, having sharpened your skills here in Blacksburg, you will put in service for a better day for all of us. So we're on a cusp of a new and much larger scale of innovation, similar to the onset of the industrial revolution. You're at the beginning of a much, much larger set of ideas, innovation, and reach that are global in nature. Before that, human and growth and development were largely limited, right. But because of industrialization and now because of the knowledge age, there's nothing compared to what you're about to live through. You don't have to dream too hard to picture what this future will look like. A smart wall will wake you up and you'll say to the smart wall, do I need to get up? And it'll say, no. And you'll go back to sleep because the smart wall has figured out that nothing's going to happen in the next 18 minutes. New systems will be developed to remove CO2 and generate fuel. Putting us on a path to address global warming and climate change. Cancer will be largely eliminated or largely manageable, saving the lives of children everywhere. We don't have an on- and- on- and- on. We don't have to wait 40 years. Some of this will occur much more quickly, but someone has to make it happen, and those people are you. Computers just won't do this without us. It's not gonna happen on autopilot, and it's not gonna happen because computers think it's gonna happen. You need to drive it, you need to make it happen. And in order to do that, you have to choose to live, not just to exist. And people, by the way, all the people in the bleachers here, I, all of us are counting on you. The future that you're building is mine to. I intend for you to make this happen. I need you to do some things. I need you to follow the principles of VPI, of Virginia Tech. I need you to be curious. Ask a lot of big questions and go out and try to find the answers. Don't accept traditional Or conventional wisdom. Define your life, and this is a key part of the University's motto, as what you do for others. What you do is not nearly as important as how you do it. Life's happiness is not what you do, but who you do it with. And be persistent. When someone says you're thinking to big Say, I don't think I'm thinking big enough. Challenge them, be smart enough not to listen to people who push you down. When someone says the odds are too small, be dumb enough to give it a shot. When someone asks, how can you do that, you say to them, I'm a Hoakie, I can make it happen, I'll figure it out. There is so- [ APPLAUSE ] There is so much power in your hands, so much possibility. And hearing it, I know how important it is. If you're going to be in a stadium to have Enter Sandman as part of the proceedings which is why I chose that quote I want to choose to live, not just exist. I didn't want to quote some great ancient philosopher or Nobel laureate. I didn't want to go out to an old inventor or modern technologist. I wanted to quote James Hetfield, who's the lead singer of Metallica. He said that. [ APPLAUSE ] So now we have the right quote. I figured, Metallica is with you every time so choosing to live means life is not lived in the glow of a monitor. Life is not a series of status updates. It's not based on your friend count. It's about the friends that you can count on and the people that you work with, and the families that you build. Engage with the world around you. Feel, and taste, and smell, and hug what's there right in front of you. Not what's a click away, but literally what's right in front of you. Don't just push a button saying you like something, tell them yourself. Life is about who you love, how you live, it's who you travel with. It's all about the people here with whom you've shared so much. Life is about much more than just existing. So I need you to go out there and choose to live. You've accomplished so much to get here, but it pales into comparison to where you'll go next. I'm excited for what you're going to do once you walk off this stage. Grab that degree and you're off. Right, you're off to a new world. You got off to a life of extraordinary accomplishment literally right in front of you. So take eachother's hands, you're off to Never Neverland. Congratulations to you all. Thank you. 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