The Last Lecture

The Last Lecture
These were students whose paths might never have had reason to cross,
given how autonomous the various disciplines at Carnegie Mellon could
be. But we made these kids unlikely partners with each other, forcing
them to do together what they couldn’t do alone.
There were four people per team, randomly chosen, and they
remained together for projects that lasted two weeks. I’d just tell them:
“Build a virtual world.” And so they’d program something, dream up
something, show everyone else, and then I’d reshuffle the teams, and
they’d get three new playmates and start again.
I had just two rules for their virtual reality worlds: No shooting
violence and no pornography. I issued that decree mostly because
those things have been done in computer games only about a zillion
times, and I was looking for original thinking.
You’d be amazed at how many nineteen-year-old boys are
completely out of ideas when you take sex and violence off the table.
And yet, when I asked them to think far beyond the obvious, most of
them rose to the challenge. In fact, the first year I offered the course, the
students presented their initial projects and they just blew me away.
Their work was literally beyond my imagination. I was especially
impressed because they were programming on weak computers by
Hollywood’s virtual reality standards, and they turned out these
incredible gems.
I had been a professor for a decade at that point, and when I
started BVW, I didn’t know what to expect. I gave the first two-week
assignment, and ended up being overwhelmed by the results. I didn’t
know what to do next. I was so at sea that I called my mentor, Andy
van Dam.
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