1. Melinda Gates’ Graduation Speech at Duke University
On May 12, 2013, Melinda Gates, cofounder of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, addressed Duke University about the evolution of computers and the way in which we communicate. “The personal computer and later the internet really started a communications revolution,” says Melinda, noting that technology by itself cannot solve all our problems. However it can and should be used to “make the world bigger.”
Advocating entrepreneurship in innovation and education, Melinda recalls spending countless hours in university buildings “coding away, seeing who could write the most efficient code… I think you probably call it today a ‘hackathon.’ Whoever lost that contest would have to go down the hall and touch the ‘mutant frogs’ being grown by the biology department.”
2. Steve Jobs’ 2005 Stanford Commencement Address
On June 12, 2005, CEO and co-founder of Apple Steve Jobs delivered an inspirational commencement speech in which he affectionately quotes American writer Stewart Brand’s idealistic slogan, “Stay hungry, stay foolish.”
Jobs candidly states that dropping out of Reed College after the first six months was one of his best life decisions.
“The minute I dropped out, I could stop taking the required classes which did not interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked far more interesting.” He sat in on a calligraphy course which proved invaluable when designing the Macintosh computer ten years later.
“If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would never have had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts.”
3. Salman Khan 2012 MIT commencement speech
Named by TIME Magazine as one of the hundred most influential people on the planet, on June 8, 2012, Sal Khan, founder of the online education platform Khan Academy, gave the commencement speech at MIT.
“Some of you might remember in the late 90s when the first internet boom was happening, there was a lot of talk about online education. Most of the conversation back then about online education was around how to profit from it, or some institutions were thinking about how to defend against it.”
In 2001 MIT launched Open CourseWare with the belief that the dissemination of knowledge should be free and easily accessible, and this had a profound impact on Khan who at the time was working in a tech company in California.
Khan optimistically concludes his speech stating “The positive revolutions will not be caused by the politicians and generals, but the innovators like you.”
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