The Multisensor Aerospace Ground Joint Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance Interoperability Coalition Architecture in April of 2005 will be setup as a service oriented architecture from various intelligence systems by metadata tagged in Extensible Markup Language. The Multisensor Aerospace Ground Joint Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance Interoperability Coalition Architecture is to piece together a common picture from all types of intelligence to give users a clearer picture by putting together more pieces of the intelligence puzzle. The United States Joint Forces Command, Virginia will lead the Multisensor Aerospace Ground Joint Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance Interoperability Coalition Architecture advanced concept technology demonstration through 2008. N.A.T.O. Multinational Consultation, Command, and Control Agency will be assisting. When the United States Joint Forces Multisensor Aerospace Ground Joint Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance Interoperability Coalition Architecture becomes operational, a warfighter could query a secure server directly for intelligence data to view all surveillance of a city for the last 24 hours and view sensors to capture needed targeting information.
The first operational users of the United States Joint Forces Multisensor Aerospace Ground Joint Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance Interoperability Coalition Architecture version is the 18th Airborne Corps lead by the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Networks and Information Integration. Two United States Joint Forces Multisensor Aerospace Ground Joint Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance Interoperability Coalition Architecture version servers are now under test at Langley Air Force Base Transformation Center, Virginia. One server handles video while the other server handles imagery, ground moving target indication radar, synthetic aperture radar, and other sensor. EchoStorm is the prime contractor for the video server and Raytheon is the prime contractor for imagery, ground moving target indication radar, synthetic aperture radar, and other sensors.
Friday, June 17, 2005
Wednesday, June 15, 2005
Senior Planning, Senior Advising, Senior Registration, United States Army R.O.T.C. Leaders Development and Assessment Course, and 05/06 Housing
(Senior planning, senior advising, and senior registration is from Wednesday, June 15, 2005 to Friday, June 17, 2005, United States Army R.O.T.C. Leaders Development and Assessment Course is from Wednesday, June 24, 2005 to Wednesday, July 27, 2005, and 05/06 Housing starts Friday, August 12, 2005. I shall be taking a short break to do senior planning, to get senior advising, to do senior registration, prepare, conduct, and review United States Army R.O.T.C. Leaders Development and Assessment Course, move into my assigned dorm and dorm room, and assist the moving in of others. Blogging is set to resume late August 2005.)
Wishful Thinking by Gene Edward Veith
The French sociologist Emmanuel Todd was one of the few experts to predict the fall of the Soviet Union. Now he is predicting the fall of the United States.
His book After the Empire: The Breakdown of the American Order has been a bestseller in Europe. It plays into many Europeans' sentiments against the Iraq war and their belief that America has become an evil empire. But his book offers encouragement to America - phobes: far from being an invincible hyperpower, according to Mr. Todd, the United States is really weak, decadent, and falling apart.
America's current war mongering, in his view, is its last ditch effort to be relevant in the new global environment that doesn't need it anymore. America's vaunted military is actually weak, only capable of picking on tiny countries. Even though America liberated his country, Mr. Todd insists the U.S. military was not so great even in World War II. Russia won the war, he claims, not America.
Isn't radical Islam a threat to the world? Not at all, says Mr. Todd. All cultures go through a revolution as they enter modernity. Islamic revolutionaries frame their ideology in religious terms. But so did the English revolutionaries when the Puritans beheaded the king and established the modern principle of parliamentary supremacy. So did the American revolutionaries. But the religiosity soon fades away once the revolution ushers in modernity. All revolutions are violent. Today's jihadist revolutions are just Islamic societies entering the modern world.
Isn't American democracy the beacon of the world? No. While the rest of the world is indeed becoming more democratic, America is losing its democracy. Mr. Todd points to the gap between the rich and the poor and the rise of powerful corporate elites. He maintains that America is becoming an oligarchy, in which only the rich and the powerful truly rule. Mr. Todd sounds like a Democrat in his critique of the U.S. economy. America is actually dependent on the rest of the world for its investment capital, labor, and products. Pointing to the trade imbalance and the budget deficits, Mr. Todd says that America is no longer capable of production. All we know how to do is consume. And once the world stops subsidizing the American economy, our standard of living will collapse.
Into the vacuum left by the demise of America will rush the unified Europe. Contrary to the common assumption, he says, Americans and Europeans do not have the same civilization. America is still backwardly religious. Europeans, though, have embraced modern secularism. Europeans have nothing against Muslims. European economies are proudly protectionist, their foreign policies peaceful, and their governments truly democratic.
Mr. Todd predicted the fall of the Soviet Union by applying his crackpot theory that social liberation is a function of high education and low birthrates. Russia's birthrate fell so precipitously largely from abortions, that Mr. Todd felt freedom was at hand. He guessed the outcome but surely missed the reasons. Mr. Todd is optimistic about Europe mainly because birthrates have fallen below replacement level, which he considers to be a good thing. Never mind the economists panicked about the labor crisis that awaits the next generation or the historians who see such low birthrates as a mark of a civilization in decline or the political observers who see the Islamification of Europe and the end of its secularism as Muslim immigrants outpopulate native Europeans and vote themselves into power.
Today, Mr. Todd's boasts ring hollow. The statist European economies are stagnating, with unemployment as much as 10 percent and overregulated businesses unable to compete globally. Muslim terrorists are now striking the tolerant Europeans. And now Europeans, even the French, are voting against the constitution of the European Union.
Mr. Todd's projections are a mix of leftist ideology, the postmodernist construction of alternative truths, and, above all, wishful thinking.
His book After the Empire: The Breakdown of the American Order has been a bestseller in Europe. It plays into many Europeans' sentiments against the Iraq war and their belief that America has become an evil empire. But his book offers encouragement to America - phobes: far from being an invincible hyperpower, according to Mr. Todd, the United States is really weak, decadent, and falling apart.
America's current war mongering, in his view, is its last ditch effort to be relevant in the new global environment that doesn't need it anymore. America's vaunted military is actually weak, only capable of picking on tiny countries. Even though America liberated his country, Mr. Todd insists the U.S. military was not so great even in World War II. Russia won the war, he claims, not America.
Isn't radical Islam a threat to the world? Not at all, says Mr. Todd. All cultures go through a revolution as they enter modernity. Islamic revolutionaries frame their ideology in religious terms. But so did the English revolutionaries when the Puritans beheaded the king and established the modern principle of parliamentary supremacy. So did the American revolutionaries. But the religiosity soon fades away once the revolution ushers in modernity. All revolutions are violent. Today's jihadist revolutions are just Islamic societies entering the modern world.
Isn't American democracy the beacon of the world? No. While the rest of the world is indeed becoming more democratic, America is losing its democracy. Mr. Todd points to the gap between the rich and the poor and the rise of powerful corporate elites. He maintains that America is becoming an oligarchy, in which only the rich and the powerful truly rule. Mr. Todd sounds like a Democrat in his critique of the U.S. economy. America is actually dependent on the rest of the world for its investment capital, labor, and products. Pointing to the trade imbalance and the budget deficits, Mr. Todd says that America is no longer capable of production. All we know how to do is consume. And once the world stops subsidizing the American economy, our standard of living will collapse.
Into the vacuum left by the demise of America will rush the unified Europe. Contrary to the common assumption, he says, Americans and Europeans do not have the same civilization. America is still backwardly religious. Europeans, though, have embraced modern secularism. Europeans have nothing against Muslims. European economies are proudly protectionist, their foreign policies peaceful, and their governments truly democratic.
Mr. Todd predicted the fall of the Soviet Union by applying his crackpot theory that social liberation is a function of high education and low birthrates. Russia's birthrate fell so precipitously largely from abortions, that Mr. Todd felt freedom was at hand. He guessed the outcome but surely missed the reasons. Mr. Todd is optimistic about Europe mainly because birthrates have fallen below replacement level, which he considers to be a good thing. Never mind the economists panicked about the labor crisis that awaits the next generation or the historians who see such low birthrates as a mark of a civilization in decline or the political observers who see the Islamification of Europe and the end of its secularism as Muslim immigrants outpopulate native Europeans and vote themselves into power.
Today, Mr. Todd's boasts ring hollow. The statist European economies are stagnating, with unemployment as much as 10 percent and overregulated businesses unable to compete globally. Muslim terrorists are now striking the tolerant Europeans. And now Europeans, even the French, are voting against the constitution of the European Union.
Mr. Todd's projections are a mix of leftist ideology, the postmodernist construction of alternative truths, and, above all, wishful thinking.
Department of Defense VS. Central Intelligence Agency
The countless untold bureaucractic stories behind the capture of terrorists like Abu Faraj al-Libbi on Wednesday, May 4, 2005 is the divergence between the Department of Defense and the Central Intelligence Agency over high value targets. The Department of Defense and the Central Intelligence Agency each have their own high value targets. Even so, the Special Operations Command was designated as the supported commander in the War on Terrorism. While Special Operations Command has representatives from the Central Intelligence Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation at headquarters and during certain operations, this does not mean that Special Operations Command is in charge of the Central Intelligence Agency representatives and the Federal Bureau of Investigation representatives even when the Central Intelligence Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation are planning or are conducting similar operations. Both the Central Intelligence Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, while sharing information and trying to coordinate operations continue to pursue independent operations to locate, to apprehend, and to kill terrorists. Another concern is whether or not United States military intelligence operatives under Special Operations Command authority can conduct reconnaissance and intelligence operations in a foreign country without the permission and knowledge of the United States Ambassador of that foreign country and the Central Intelligence Agency Chief of Station of that foreign country. Traditionally, United States military intelligence operatives are required to have permission before conducting operations.
Human Rights and Aggressive Tactics in the War on Terrorism
There is a growing perception that counter terrorism actions are taking a toll on human rights. More than one repressive regime has used the excuse of combating terrorism to clamp down on legitimate opposition groups. Several human rights groups also are beginning to question the tactics being used by democratic countries. Preservation of human rights in the War on Terrorism must be one of several key issues. We owe it to the victims of terrorism to ensure that adequate power and resources are established and used to bring terrorists to justice. We also owe it to the men and women fighting the War on Terrorism to never sacrifice the principles they are dedicated to defend. Counter terrorism actions and measures must respect the rule of law. Even so, achieving compatibility between effective police and military actions and human rights is not an easy task. Police investigative methods are often not sufficient to obtain intelligence necessary to prevent terrorists attacks.
Tuesday, June 14, 2005
Securities and Exchange Commission Global Security Risk Office
The Securities and Exchange Commission Global Security Risk Office has begun to take a more active role in overseeing the engagement of American commerce. The Securities and Exchange Commission Global Security Risk Office sent letters to American companies and foreign companies registered in the United States of America requesting the disclosure of any commerce with terror supporting countries. The disclosure request included commerce in countries subject to any sanctions. The Securities and Exchange Commission Global Security Risk Office worked with the Federal Bureau of Investigation to circulate and obtain information from foreign registered companies in the United States of America concerning any commerce they might have with persons or entities from terror supporting countries. Also the Securities and Exchange Commission Global Security Risk Office has chosen an online global security risk assessment product. This online global security risk assessment product will enable the Securities and Exchange Commission Global Security Risk Office to obtain and to provide online disclosure information to current and to potential investors of American commerce.
Sunday, June 12, 2005
When Decency and Expediency Clash by Senator John McCain
In the wake of a brutal crackdown last month in the eastern Uzbek city of Andijan, American policymakers seem to face a dilemma. On the one hand, the US must vigorously protest against the killing of hundreds of unarmed demonstrators and reaffirm that we stand for freedom, not repression. But on the other hand, the US has important military interests in Uzbekistan, including the use of a regional base that assists our efforts in Afghanistan. What is to be done?
While many commentators have described this as a complex problem, I believe the solution is simple. Either the government of Uzbekistan must make immediate, fundamental changes in the way it operates, or America's relations with it must change fundamentally.
First, a few facts. Last month the security services of Islam Karimov, Uzbek president, fired on demonstrators after protesters stormed a prison and local government headquarters. The government contends that fewer than 200 people were killed by the troops, all of them armed Islamic militants. Eyewitnesses, journalists and independent groups tell a darker, much different, story. They estimate the dead at somewhere between 500 and 1,000, and say the vast majority were unarmed men, women and children protesting against the government's corruption, lack of opportunity and continued oppression. In addition to those killed, many others were wounded, and at least 500 fled across the border into Kyrgyzstan.
Two weeks ago, senators Lindsey Graham, John Sununu and I travelled to central Asia, stopping briefly in Uzbekistan. There we saw photographs and heard other evidence that was as compelling as it was shocking, and it is clear that the Uzbek government's account of the events in Andijan simply does not add up. It is also apparent that the killings were just the latest and most dramatic example of government repression in Uzbekistan.
In that country today there are no independent media or true opposition parties. The government's human rights record is appalling, and political rights are virtually unknown. Often in the name of fighting Islamist terrorism, the government rounds up those opposed to its rule, sometimes subjecting prisoners to torture.
The government has provided genuine assistance to the US in the war on terror, and was particularly helpful during the height of our operations against the Taliban. But in a recent editorial in The Weekly Standard, Stephen Schwarz and William Kristol point out: "The Uzbek regime that was part of the solution in 2001 is now, with its bloody suppression of protests, part of the problem." They are right. Uzbekistan today does have a real problem with violent Islamic extremism, but this will worsen because of the regime's record of repression, not in spite of it. The Karimov regime must alter its governance radically, and it should begin by accepting an international inquiry into the Andijan events.
Unfortunately, the only change one sees today is movement in the wrong direction. Since Andijan the regime has rounded up opponents, refused to allow the European Union's human rights envoy to enter the country, denied the Red Cross access to the wounded and imprisoned, and forced the termination of the American Peace Corps operation in Uzbekistan. During our brief visit two weeks ago, no government official would agree to meet us.
If this trend continues, the US has no choice but to re-evaluate all aspects of its relationship with Uzbekistan, and this includes our military relations. While we review our policy, we should suspend any talk of a long-term basing arrangement and look very critically at our continued presence at the Karshi-Khanabad air base.
To do otherwise risks damaging America's credibility as the US puts ever greater priority on the promotion of human rights and democracy abroad. We cannot remain idle while a government with which we have close ties so blatantly contravenes the ideal of freedom. This does not mean that we simply walk away - in fact, allowing Uzbekistan to retreat into isolation poses its own dangers - but it does imply a different kind of relationship, one in which the US explicitly and publicly presses Mr Karimov to change.
Using sticks and carrots to encourage positive change may not be successful, but it would put the US on the right side of history. It would show the Uzbek people that we support their freedom, not simply our narrow security interests, and would actually strengthen our security in the long run. For if we have learnt any lesson from the attacks of September 11 2001, it is that, where repression and despair rule, extremism and violence breed.
This is a lesson that applies just as much to Mr Karimov's government as it does to the US government. And so I hope his regime will realise that the only way to true security is to embrace fundamental freedoms and human rights. But if the US cannot induce change in Uzbekistan, we can at least avoid a close and continuing relationship with its current government. The world will expect no less of us, and we should expect no less of ourselves.
While many commentators have described this as a complex problem, I believe the solution is simple. Either the government of Uzbekistan must make immediate, fundamental changes in the way it operates, or America's relations with it must change fundamentally.
First, a few facts. Last month the security services of Islam Karimov, Uzbek president, fired on demonstrators after protesters stormed a prison and local government headquarters. The government contends that fewer than 200 people were killed by the troops, all of them armed Islamic militants. Eyewitnesses, journalists and independent groups tell a darker, much different, story. They estimate the dead at somewhere between 500 and 1,000, and say the vast majority were unarmed men, women and children protesting against the government's corruption, lack of opportunity and continued oppression. In addition to those killed, many others were wounded, and at least 500 fled across the border into Kyrgyzstan.
Two weeks ago, senators Lindsey Graham, John Sununu and I travelled to central Asia, stopping briefly in Uzbekistan. There we saw photographs and heard other evidence that was as compelling as it was shocking, and it is clear that the Uzbek government's account of the events in Andijan simply does not add up. It is also apparent that the killings were just the latest and most dramatic example of government repression in Uzbekistan.
In that country today there are no independent media or true opposition parties. The government's human rights record is appalling, and political rights are virtually unknown. Often in the name of fighting Islamist terrorism, the government rounds up those opposed to its rule, sometimes subjecting prisoners to torture.
The government has provided genuine assistance to the US in the war on terror, and was particularly helpful during the height of our operations against the Taliban. But in a recent editorial in The Weekly Standard, Stephen Schwarz and William Kristol point out: "The Uzbek regime that was part of the solution in 2001 is now, with its bloody suppression of protests, part of the problem." They are right. Uzbekistan today does have a real problem with violent Islamic extremism, but this will worsen because of the regime's record of repression, not in spite of it. The Karimov regime must alter its governance radically, and it should begin by accepting an international inquiry into the Andijan events.
Unfortunately, the only change one sees today is movement in the wrong direction. Since Andijan the regime has rounded up opponents, refused to allow the European Union's human rights envoy to enter the country, denied the Red Cross access to the wounded and imprisoned, and forced the termination of the American Peace Corps operation in Uzbekistan. During our brief visit two weeks ago, no government official would agree to meet us.
If this trend continues, the US has no choice but to re-evaluate all aspects of its relationship with Uzbekistan, and this includes our military relations. While we review our policy, we should suspend any talk of a long-term basing arrangement and look very critically at our continued presence at the Karshi-Khanabad air base.
To do otherwise risks damaging America's credibility as the US puts ever greater priority on the promotion of human rights and democracy abroad. We cannot remain idle while a government with which we have close ties so blatantly contravenes the ideal of freedom. This does not mean that we simply walk away - in fact, allowing Uzbekistan to retreat into isolation poses its own dangers - but it does imply a different kind of relationship, one in which the US explicitly and publicly presses Mr Karimov to change.
Using sticks and carrots to encourage positive change may not be successful, but it would put the US on the right side of history. It would show the Uzbek people that we support their freedom, not simply our narrow security interests, and would actually strengthen our security in the long run. For if we have learnt any lesson from the attacks of September 11 2001, it is that, where repression and despair rule, extremism and violence breed.
This is a lesson that applies just as much to Mr Karimov's government as it does to the US government. And so I hope his regime will realise that the only way to true security is to embrace fundamental freedoms and human rights. But if the US cannot induce change in Uzbekistan, we can at least avoid a close and continuing relationship with its current government. The world will expect no less of us, and we should expect no less of ourselves.
Stanford University Commencement 2005 by Steve Jobs
I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories.
The first story is about connecting the dots.
I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?
It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.
And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.
It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:
Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.
None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.
Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something - your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.
My second story is about love and loss.
I was lucky Ð I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation - the Macintosh - a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.
I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me Ð I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.
I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.
During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I retuned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.
I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.
My third story is about death.
When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.
Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything Ð all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.
About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.
I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now.
This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope its the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:
No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.
Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of other's opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.
Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.
Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.
Thank you all very much.
The first story is about connecting the dots.
I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?
It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.
And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.
It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:
Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.
None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.
Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something - your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.
My second story is about love and loss.
I was lucky Ð I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation - the Macintosh - a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.
I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me Ð I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.
I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.
During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I retuned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.
I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.
My third story is about death.
When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.
Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything Ð all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.
About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.
I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now.
This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope its the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:
No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.
Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of other's opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.
Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.
Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.
Thank you all very much.
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