谷歌創始人拉里·佩奇密歇根大學畢業演講稿

如果看過谷歌的介紹,可能你會不由得想到一個詞—神話。這説的不光是拉里·佩奇和謝爾蓋·布林兩個博士沒讀完的輟學生在硅谷的車庫裏創業,最後建成了市值超過ibm(甚至有人預測五年後會超越微軟)的it巨擎的傳奇故事,説的還是谷歌裏面那令無數打工族垂涎萬尺的企業文化:牛仔褲、t-shirt衫的隨意穿着,美餐、中餐、印度餐等一應俱全的大食堂,免費就醫、洗衣、洗車的服務,甚至可以帶上狗狗和滑板車一起上班……

谷歌的故事,舉世矚目。創始人的生活也為人津津樂道。今年5月,拉里·佩奇獲邀在母校密歇根大學的畢業典禮上發表演講。雖然已是成功典範,但拉里並沒有誇誇其談,他用誠摯的語言講述自己家庭背景和人生經歷,告訴大家人生中最寶貴的兩樣東西—夢想和親友。

class of XX! first i’d like you to stand up, and wave and cheer your supportive family and friends! i’m sure you can find them out there. show your love!

a long time ago, in this cold september of 1962, there was a steven’s co-op at this very university. that co-op had a kitchen with a ceiling that had been cleaned by student volunteers probably every decade or so. picture a college girl named gloria, climbing up high on a ladder, struggling to clean that filthy ceiling. standing on the floor, a young boarder named carl was admiring the view. and that’s how they met. they were my parents, so i suppose you could say i’m a direct result of that kitchen chemistry experiment, right here at michigan.

everyone in my family went here to michigan: my brother, my mom, my dad—all of us. my father’s father worked in the chevy plant in flint, michigan. he was an assembly line worker. he drove his two children here to ann arbor, and told them: that is where you’re going to college. i know it sounds funny now. both of his kids actually did graduate from michigan. that was the american dream.

what i’m trying to tell you, this is way more than a homecoming for me. i have a story about following dreams. or maybe more accurately, it’s a story about finding a path to make those dreams real.

you know what it’s like to wake up in the middle of the night with a vivid dream? and you know how, if you don’t have a pencil and 4)pad by the bed, it will be completely gone by the next morning?

well, i had one of those dreams when i was 23. when i suddenly woke up, i was thinking: what if we could download the whole web, and just keep the links? and i grabbed a pen and started writing! sometimes it’s important to wake up and stop dreaming. i spent the middle of that night scribbling out the details and convincing myself it would work. soon after, i told my advisor, terry winograd, it would take a couple of weeks for me to download the web—he nodded knowingly, fully aware it would take much longer but wise enough not to tell me. the optimism of youth is often underrated! amazingly, at that time, i have no thoughts building a search engine. the idea wasn’t even on the radar. but, much later we happened upon a better way of ranking and we made a really great search engine, and google was born. when a really great dream shows up, grab it!

when i was here at michigan, i had actually been taught how to make dreams real! i know it sounds funny, but that is what i learned in a summer camp converted into a training program called leadershape. their slogan is to have a “healthy disregard for the impossible”. that program encouraged me to pursue a crazy idea at the time: i wanted to build a personal rapid transit system on campus to replace the buses. i still think a lot about transportation—you never loose a dream, it just incubates as a hobby. many things people labor hard to do now, like cooking, cleaning, and driving will require much less human time in the future. that is, if we “have a healthy disregard for the impossible” and actually build the solutions.

i think it is often easier to make progress on mega-ambitious dreams. i know that sounds completely nuts. but, since no one else is crazy enough to do it, you’ll have little competition. the best people want to work on the big challenges. that is what happened with google. our mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. how can that not get you excited? but we almost didn’t start google, actually, because my co-founder sergey and i were too worried about dropping out of the phd program. you are probably on the right track if you feel like a sidewalk worm during a rainstorm! that is about how we felt after we maxed out three credit cards buying hard disks off the back of a truck. that was actually the first hardware for google. parents and friends: more credit cards always help. what is the one sentence summary of how you change the world? always work hard on something uncomfortably exciting!

as a ph.d. student, i actually had three projects i wanted to work on. thank goodness my advisor said, “why don’t you work on the web for a while?” technology and especially the internet can really help you be lazy. lazy? what i mean is a group of three people can write software that then millions can use and enjoy. can three people answer the phone a million times? find the everage in the world, so you can be truly lazy!

overall, i know it seems like the world is crumbling out there, but it is actually a great time in your life to get a little crazy, follow your curiosity, and be ambitious about it. don’t give up on your dream. the world needs you all!

so here’s my final story:

on a day like today, you might feel 12)exhilarated—like you’ve just been shot out of a cannon at the circus—and even invincible. don’t ever forget that incredible feeling. but also: always remember that the moments we have with friends and family, the chances we have to do things that might make a big difference in the world, or even to make a small difference to the ones we love—all those wonderful chances that life gives us, life also takes away. it can happen fast, and a whole lot sooner than you think.

in late march 1996, soon after i had moved to stanford for grad school, my dad had difficulty breathing and drove to the hospital. two months later, he died. i was completely devastated. many years later, after a startup, after falling in love, and after so many of life’s adventures, i found myself thinking about my dad.

if my dad were alive today, the thing i think he would be most happy about is that lucy and i have a baby in the hopper. if he were here today, well, it would be one of the best days of his life.

many of us are fortunate enough to be here with family. some of us have dear friends and family to go home to. please keep them close and remember: they are what really matters in life.

thanks, mom; thanks, lucy.

and thank you, all, very much.

中文翻譯：

XX屆的同學們,首先我希望大家都站起來,向支持你們的親朋好友揮手致意!我相信你們都能在人羣中找到他們,把你們的愛表現出來吧!

很久以前,1962年的寒冷9月,這座校園裏有一家史蒂文消費合作社。此合作社有一間廚房,那裏的天花板由學生志願者打掃,大概每十來年才一次吧。想象一下,畫面上有位名叫格洛里亞的女大學生,爬上了高高的梯子,努力地打掃那髒兮兮的天花板。一位名叫卡爾的寄宿生站在地上,為該情景欽佩不已。這就是他倆的初次邂逅。他倆就是我的父母親。所以我想你們會説,我就是這裏——密歇根大學那個“廚房化學實驗”的直接成果。

我們家的所有成員都畢業於密歇根大學:我哥哥、我媽媽和爸爸——我們全家。我的祖父在密歇根州弗林特的雪佛蘭汽車工廠工作,他是裝配線上的一名工人。他曾開車把兩個孩子送到安娜堡這兒,並告訴他們:這是你們今後要上的大學。我知道現在聽起來很好笑。他的兩個孩子也的確從密歇根大學畢業。這就是“美國夢”。

我想告訴大家的是,來這兒對我的意義絕對不僅僅是重回舊地。我有個關於追尋夢想的故事,或者更確切地説,這是一個找到夢想成真之路的故事。

你們知道,午夜從一個逼真的夢境中醒來是什麼感覺嗎?你們知道如果牀邊沒有紙筆,而第二天一早就忘個精光又會怎樣嗎?

喔,我23歲的時候,就做過一個那樣的夢。我猛然驚醒,想着:如果我們能把整個網絡下載下來,但僅保存鏈接會怎樣?然後我抓起一支筆寫了起來。有時候別做夢,及時醒來是非常重要的。我花了一個午夜描畫出細節,並確信那是可以做得到的。不久後,我告訴我的導師特里·温諾格拉德,那要花幾周時間來下載整個網絡——他只是會意地點點頭,他完全知道要花的時間其實長得多,但他很睿智,並沒有告訴我。年輕人的樂觀精神通常不可低估!令人驚訝的是,我當時沒有想過要造一個搜索引擎。這一概念甚至沒有進入我腦海。但很久以後,我們突然找到更好排列網頁的方法,並造出一個非常好的搜索引擎——谷歌就這樣誕生了。當偉大的夢想閃現時,抓住它吧!

我在密歇根大學上學時,其實就學過如何實現夢想。我知道這聽起來很可笑,但那是我從一個由夏令營轉化而來的名為“塑造領袖”的培訓項目中學到的。該項目的口號就是“理性地藐視不可能”。那個項目激勵着我追尋那時一個瘋狂的想法:我想在校園內建立一套個人快速交通系統以代替公交。我直到現在還在思考很多有關交通的問題—你永不要放走夢想,而要把它當作一種習慣去培育。現在人們花很大力氣乾的很多事情,如做飯、清潔、駕駛,以後只會佔用人們更少的時間。也就是説,如果我們“理性地藐視不可能”,並確實找到新的解決方案的話。

我認為,通常追尋雄心萬丈的夢想更容易些。我知道這聽起來完全是一派胡言。不過,既然沒有別的人瘋狂到會做這件事情,你就沒有競爭對手了。優秀的人愛接受大挑戰。這就是在谷歌發生的事情。我們的目標就是組合全球的信息,使其隨手可得,隨處可用。那怎麼能不讓大家興奮呢?但是我們那時幾乎啟動不成谷歌,因為我和聯合創始人謝爾蓋都太擔心拿不到博士學位。要是你覺得自己是暴風雨下人行道上的一條蚯蚓,那很可能你就真的走對路了。那就是我們刷爆了三張信用卡,從一輛貨車的車尾買來硬盤後的感覺。那就是谷歌最早的硬件設備。家長和朋友們:多點信用卡總是有用的。如何用一句話總結你該如何改變世界?那就是在那些讓人極度興奮的事情上發奮努力。

當我在讀博士的時候,其實我有三個項目是想做的。謝天謝地,我的導師對我説,“為什麼你不先做一會網絡的事呢?”科技,尤其是因特網真的能讓人變懶。變懶?我的意思是一個三人的小組可以寫出讓數百萬人喜愛使用的軟件程序。但三個人可以接上百萬次電話嗎?找到撬起地球的槓桿,你就能真的懶起來。

總而言之,我知道這個世界看起來分崩離析,但這確是你們人生中一個偉大的時代,你們可以瘋狂一點,追隨自己的好奇心,雄心勃勃地實現它。不要放棄你們的夢想。世界需要你們所有人。

以下是我要説的最後一個故事:

就像今天的某一日,你們可能感到欣喜若狂,就像你剛從馬戲團的大炮口被射了出來——甚至更加所向無敵。絕不要忘了那種難以名狀的美妙感覺,但同時,也要永遠記住和親朋好友相聚的時刻,記住我們得做些可能會為世界帶來鉅變的事情的機會,或者只是為你所愛的人帶來小變化的機會——所有生活給予我們美好機會,也能將它們帶走。世事瞬息萬變,比你設想的要快得多。

1996年3月下旬,就在我到斯坦福上研究生院不久,我爸爸呼吸出現困難,被送到醫院。兩個月後,他去世了。我當時幾近崩潰了。許多年以後,在我重新振作後,在我談戀愛後,在我體驗瞭如此多的人生經歷後,我發現自己總是想起我的爸爸。

如果我爸爸能活到今天,我想他最開心的莫過於看到露西和我即將擁有自己的孩子。如果他今天也能來到這裏,噢,那將會是他人生中最美好的日子

之一。

我們中很多人都很幸運,能夠在這裏和家人們一起。我們中的一些還可以和親友家人一起回家。請和他們保持親密,並且記住:他們才是生命中真正至關重要的。

感謝媽媽,感謝露西。

同時,十分感謝大家。