I want to thank Harvard University for giving me this honor at this time. Next year, I will change my job (note: I will retire from Microsoft) ... It's good to finally write my undergraduate degree on my resume.
I am happy for all the students present today. It is much easier for you to get a degree than for me. Harvard's school newspaper called me "the most successful dropout in the history of Harvard University". I think this may qualify me to speak on behalf of my students ... among all the losers, I did the best.
However, I also want to remind you that I let steve ballmer drop out of Harvard Business School. Therefore, I am a bad influence person. That's why I was invited to speak at your's graduation ceremony. If I had given a speech at the welcoming ceremony in your, far fewer people would have graduated here today.
For me, the experience of studying at Harvard is an extraordinary experience. Campus life is very interesting. I often attend classes that I didn't attend. Harvard's extracurricular life is also great, and I live a carefree life in Radcliffe. Every day, many people in my dormitory stay up until midnight to discuss all kinds of things. Because everyone knows that I never consider getting up early the next day. This made me the head of those restless students on campus. We stuck together and made a gesture of rejecting all normal students.
Radcliffe is a good place to live. There are more girls than boys, and most boys are science and engineering students. This situation creates the best opportunity for me, if you know what I mean. Unfortunately, it is here that I learned a sad lesson in life: a big chance doesn't mean you will succeed.
My most unforgettable memory at Harvard occurred in 1975 65438+ October. At that time, I called a company in Albuquerque from my dormitory building, which was already making the world's first personal computer. I offered to sell them the software.
I'm afraid they'll find out that I'm a student living in the dormitory and hang up. But they said, "We're not ready yet. Come back to us in a month. " This is good news, because the software has not been written yet. From then on, I worked day and night on this small extracurricular project, which led to the end of my student life and the beginning of an extraordinary trip to Microsoft.
Anyway, my memory of Harvard is mainly related to abundant energy and intellectual activities. Life at Harvard is pleasant, stressful and sometimes even frustrating, but it is always full of challenges. Living in Harvard is an attractive special treatment ... although I left early, my experience here, the friends I made here and some ideas I cultivated here have changed me forever.
However, if I think about it now, I do have a real regret.
When I left Harvard, I didn't realize how unequal the world was. The inequality of human health, wealth and opportunity is terrible, which makes countless people forced to live in despair.
I learned a lot of new ideas in economics and politics at Harvard. I also learned a lot about the new progress in science.
However, the greatest progress of mankind comes not from these discoveries, but from those discoveries that help reduce human inequality. No matter what means-democratic system, sound public education system, high-quality medical care, or extensive economic opportunities-reducing inequality has always been the greatest achievement of mankind.
When I left the campus, I didn't know that millions of young people in this country could not receive education. I don't know, there are countless people living in unspeakable poverty and diseases in developing China.
It took me decades to understand these things.
Dear students, you came to Harvard at a different time than I did. You know more about how unequal the world is than your former students. During my study at Harvard, I hope you have thought about a question, that is, how do we finally deal with this inequality, and how do we solve this problem in this era of accelerated development of new technologies.
For the convenience of discussion, please imagine if you can donate some time every week and some money every month-you hope these time and money can be used to save lives and improve human life. Where would you choose?
For Melinda and me, this is also the question we face: how can we? During the discussion, Melinda and I read an article saying that in those poor countries, millions of children die every year from diseases that are no longer a problem in the United States. Measles, malaria, pneumonia, hepatitis B, yellow fever, and a rotavirus that I have never heard of, these diseases kill 500,000 children every year, but there is no death case in the United States.
We were shocked. We believe that if millions of children are dying and they can be saved, then the world should make it a top priority to save them with drugs. But this is not the case. Those life-saving drugs that cost less than a dollar didn't reach them.
If you believe that every life is equal, it is unacceptable when you find that some lives have been saved and some have been abandoned. We said to ourselves, "We can't do this. If this is true, then this should be the top priority of our efforts. "
So, we began to work in the way that anyone would think. We asked, "How can the world watch these children die?"
The answer is simple and embarrassing. In the market economy, saving children is unprofitable work, and the government will not provide subsidies. These children will die because their parents have no financial strength and no political right to speak.
However, you and I both have economic strength and can make a voice in politics.
We can make the market serve the poor better. If we can design a more innovative system-if we can change the market so that more people can make a profit, or at least make a living-then it can help those who suffer from extreme inequality. We can also put pressure on governments around the world to spend taxpayers' money in places that are more in line with taxpayers' values.
If we can find a way to help the poor, bring profits to businessmen and votes to politicians, then we will find a sustainable development path to reduce world inequality. This task is infinite. It can't be completely completed, but any conscious attempt to solve this problem will change the world.
I am optimistic about this problem. However, I have also met despairing skeptics. They said: "inequality has existed since the first day of human birth, and it will also exist on the last day of human extinction." -because humans don't care about this problem at all. " I can't agree with this view at all.
I believe that the problem is not that we don't care, but that we don't know how to do it.
At this moment, everyone in this yard will have one moment or another in their lives, and feel extremely sad when witnessing the human tragedy. But we did nothing, not because we were indifferent, but because we didn't know what to do and how to do it. If we know what is effective, then we will take action.
The obstacle to changing the world is not human indifference, but that the world is too complicated.
In order to turn care into action, we need to find problems, find solutions and evaluate the consequences. But the complexity of the world makes all these steps difficult to do.
Even with the internet and 24-hour live news stations, it is still difficult for people to really find out the problem. When a plane crashes, officials will immediately hold a press conference, and they promise to investigate and find out the reason to prevent similar accidents from happening again in the future.
But if those officials dare to tell the truth, they will say, "On this day, only 0.5% of all avoidable deaths in the world came from this air crash. We are determined to make every effort to investigate this 0.5% cause of death. "
Obviously, the more important problem is not the air crash, but millions of other preventable deaths.
We don't have much chance to know about those deaths. The media always reports the news. Millions of people will die, which is not news. If no one reports these incidents, they will be easily overlooked. On the other hand, even if we do witness the events themselves or see the relevant reports, it is difficult for us to continue to pay attention to these events. It is painful to watch others suffer, and the problem is so complicated that we don't know how to help others at all. So we have to turn our faces away.
Even if the problem is really found, it is only the first step, and then there is the second step: finding solutions from complex events.
If we want our concerns to be implemented, we must find solutions. If we have a clear and reliable answer, then when any organization or individual asks "how can I help", we can take action. We can make sure that we don't waste a little bit of human concern for the rest of the world. However, the complexity of the world makes it difficult for us to find an effective action method for everyone who cares about the world, so it is often difficult for human beings to care about others to produce practical results.
Finding a solution from this complex world can be divided into four steps: determining the goal, finding the most efficient method, discovering new technologies suitable for this method, and making the most clever use of existing technologies, whether it is complex drugs or the simplest mosquito nets.
AIDS is an example. There is no doubt that the overall goal is to eradicate the disease. The most effective method is prevention. The ideal technology is to invent a vaccine, which can be immunized for life as long as it is injected once Therefore, the government, pharmaceutical companies and foundations should fund vaccine research. However, such research work may not be completed within ten years. Therefore, at the same time, we must make use of existing technology. At present, the most effective prevention method is to try to make people avoid those dangerous behaviors.
In order to achieve this new goal, a new four-step cycle can be adopted. This is a pattern. The key is never to stop thinking and acting. We must not repeat the mistakes made in the last century on malaria and tuberculosis, when we gave up taking action because these problems were too complicated.
After finding the problem and the solution, it is the last step-evaluating the work results, spreading your successful experience or failure experience, and letting others gain something from your efforts.
Of course, you must have some statistics. You must let others know that your project has vaccinated millions of children. You must also let others know how much the number of child deaths has dropped. All these are crucial, which can not only improve the project effect, but also get more help from the business community and the government.
However, these are not enough. If you want to inspire others to participate in your project, you must come up with more statistics. You must show the humanity of your project so that others can feel what saving a life means to those families in trouble.
A few years ago, I went to Davos to attend a global health forum on how to save millions of lives. God, it's millions! Think about how exciting it is to save a person's life. Now you have to amplify this excitement by millions of times ... unfortunately, this is the most boring forum I have ever participated in, so boring that I can't force myself to listen.
I will never forget that experience, because we just released the first 13 version of a software, and we made the audience jump up and shout with excitement. I like that people are excited about software, so why can't we make people more excited about saving lives?
You can't make people excited unless you can make them see or feel the influence of actions. How to do this is not a simple matter.
As before, I am optimistic on this issue. It is true that human inequality has always existed, but new tools that can simplify complex things have only recently appeared. These new tools can help us give full play to human compassion, which is why the future is different from the past.
In this era, new innovations have been emerging-biotechnology, computers and the Internet-which gives us an unprecedented opportunity to end extreme poverty and the death of non-malignant diseases.
Sixty years ago, george marshall also announced a plan at the graduation ceremony in this place to help the post-war construction of those European countries. He said: "I think the difficulty is that this problem is too complicated. Newspapers and radio stations constantly provide all kinds of facts to the public, which makes it extremely difficult for ordinary people in the street to judge the situation clearly. In fact, after layers of communication, it is impossible to really grasp the situation. "
Thirty years after Marshall delivered this speech, my class graduated, and of course I was not among them. At that time, new technologies were just beginning to sprout, which would make the world smaller, more open, easier to see and closer.
The emergence of low-cost personal computers gave birth to a powerful Internet, which provided great opportunities for learning and communication.
The magic of the internet lies not only in shortening the physical distance, but also in making us neighbors with heaven. This also greatly increases the chances for people with the same ideas to get together, and we can solve the same problems together. This has greatly accelerated the process of innovation, and the speed of development is simply shocking.
At the same time, only one sixth of the world's population has access to the Internet. This means that there are still many creative people who have not joined our discussion. Those smart people with practical experience and related experience have no technology to help them and share their talents or ideas with the world.
We need to give as many people as possible opportunities to use new technologies, because these new technologies are triggering a revolution, so human beings can help each other. New technology is creating a possibility that not only the government, but also universities, companies, small institutions and even individuals can find problems, find solutions and evaluate the effect of their efforts to change the problems that Marshall talked about 60 years ago-hunger, poverty and despair.
Harvard is a big family. The people in this yard are one of the smartest human groups in the world.
What can we do?
There is no doubt that Harvard teachers, alumni, students and sponsors have used their abilities to improve the lives of people all over the world. But what else can we do? Is it possible for Harvard people to use their wisdom to help those who have never even heard the name "Harvard"?
Please allow me to make a request to all deans and professors-you are the intellectual leaders of Harvard. When you hire new teachers, grant tenure, evaluate courses, and decide the criteria for awarding degrees, ask yourself the following questions:
Are our best talents solving our biggest problems?
Does Harvard encourage her teachers to study and solve the most serious inequality in the world? Have Harvard students learned anything from extreme poverty in the world ... worldwide famine ... lack of clean water resources ... girls who can't go to school ... children who died of non-malignant diseases ... have Harvard students learned anything from it?
Have those who live the best life in the world learned anything from those who are the most difficult?
These questions are not rhetorical in language. You must answer them with your own actions.
On the day I was admitted to Harvard University, my mother was very proud. She never stopped urging me to do more for others. A few days before my wedding, she presided over a ceremony for a bride to enter my home. At this ceremony, she read aloud a letter about marriage, which she wrote to Melinda. At that time, my mother was suffering from terminal cancer, but she still thought it was another opportunity to spread her faith. At the end of the letter, she wrote: "The greater your ability, the greater people's expectations of you."
Think about what people in our yard have been given-gifts, privileges and opportunities-so it can be said that people all over the world have almost unlimited rights and expect us to make contributions.
Like the expectation of this era, I also want to give all the students who graduated today a piece of advice: you should choose a problem, a complex problem, a problem related to the profound inequality of human beings, and then you should become an expert on this problem. If you can take this issue as the core of your career, then you will be very good. But you don't have to do those big things. As long as a few hours a week, you can get information through the Internet, find like-minded friends, find difficulties and find solutions to them.
Don't let the complexity of this world get in your way. Become an activist. It is our responsibility to solve human inequality. This will be one of the most important experiences in your life.
Dear graduates, the your era is magical. When you leave Harvard, you have skills that our students don't have. You already knew about the inequality in the world, but we didn't know it then. With this understanding, if you abandon those who you can help again, you will be condemned by your conscience. With a little effort, you can change the lives of those people. You are more capable than us; You must start as soon as possible and stick to it as long as possible.
How can you not act if you know everything and say everything?
I hope you will return to Harvard in 30 years and remember what you have done with your talents and abilities. I hope that at that time, you will judge yourself not only by your professional achievements, but also by your efforts to change the deep inequality in the world and how you treat those who are far away from Qianshan and have nothing to do with you. The only thing you have in common with them is being human.
Finally, good luck.