Chancellor Berdahl, Vice Chancellor Cerny, Dean Gray, colleagues, graduates, parents, relatives and friends:

What a truly great day this is! Being an academic person all my life, I love Commencement. It is one of the few things universities do that don't go wrong.

It's a time for you graduates to feel good, to feel satisfied, and a chance to open a new chapter in your lives–possibly even a whole new book. For your families, it's a time of freedom as well–possibly in more ways than one.

I want to offer special congratulations to Dean Gray on his appointment as executive vice chancellor and provost. He is taking on the toughest job at the university. Paul, in your life's plan you may never have seen yourself as provost. In fact, most of us don't see ourselves in the roles we ultimately play. Neither the dean nor I could have predicted what has happened to us. It's funny the way that is.

Of course, you graduates face the same unpredictability that we did, and your lives will be at least as eventful, probably more so. The pace of life continues to accelerate. But, as things move faster, our reach–your reach–is farther all the time. It's funny the way that is.

When the dean and I were young faculty members, it was more or less taken for granted that technology was going to take over society. I found that picture rather depressing at the time, but the picture persisted almost without challenge. Back then, big business and big government were pervasive. It was assumed that they would continue to control more and more. In 1960, Fortune 500 companies employed more than 50 percent of the U.S. workforce. The projection was that people would be led increasing toward a life controlled by regulation and described by anonymity. Big Brother seemed very real and people genuinely feared becoming cogs in a machine, numbers in a file, or, as we used to say then, holes punched in an IBM card. I know you asking what’s an IBM card–you will have to ask your parents about that.

Anyway, technology was the future, and the future was patently dehumanizing. This picture was widely accepted. Books, like George Orwell's 1984, described big government's control over society. In the first James Bond film, Dr. No's faceless technicians did his dirty work. In 2001: A Space Odyssey, Hal the computer took over the spacecraft and wouldn’t allow Dave and Frank to shut him down, to control him. He froze them both solid as they slept. This picture of the future was very clear and seemed inevitable based on what we were experiencing at that time.

But then look at what actually happened? The future that developed, or shall we say today, is the polar opposite of what was predicted back then.

The new technology of the Internet broke the grip of big business and gave individuals freedom to create and explore like never before in the history of the world. Anyone can start a business and sell products world wide–and they do. Education has never been more accessible than it is today–and greater numbers are taking advantage of it every year. Technology has created opportunities for entrepreneurship that we are only now beginning to realize.

Knowledge is power, as Francis Bacon said, and this knowledge-power today is comparable to the power formerly held only by those who controlled natural resources, land and people. Today, Fortune 500 companies employ only 10 percent of the workforce.

My point here is not to advocate for the new economy, but simply to dramatize how very wrong we can be even when we know we are right and are doing the right thing. It's funny the way that is.

Now let me tell you something that I'll risk saying is right. You have been told repeatedly how great this university and this college are. This is in fact true. This place is the best of the best, and even if it is a little frightening, you are the best of the best, too.

So, you ask, what is the problem? Here is something to think about.

You've been more or less the "A" student from the beginning. Performed well in high school and now at college. Strong SAT scores, probably after a lot of hard work. To achieve at this level, you were required to "do the right thing." Not much time for deviation, no chance to fall out of step, fool around, have a bad semester. No possibility of missing a course sequence–too risky. No doubt everyone around you–parents, faculty, friends, urged you to do the right thing, keep in step, get good grades, ace the SATs, ace the GREs, get into Tau Beta Pi–Succeed. Do the right thing. Do what others expect of you. We can’t disappoint them.

Everybody knows what it takes to succeed. But do they? Really, do they?

Now there are some people who refuse to "do the right thing" - to do what's expected of them. Most of them do not have the great credentials you have, did not get into a prestigious university, and did not graduate with a golden future. Those people are the iconoclasts, the adventurers and even dropouts. Some work at MacDonald’s, of course; hardly an enviable alternative for most of us. Others, however, like Steve Wozniak or Bill Gates, start companies like Apple or Microsoft. His greatly disappointed father sent off Charles Darwin to sea. An 18th century carpenter, John Harrison, won the "Longitude Prize" by building a clock that was accurate to five seconds over the journey from Britain to the West Indies and back, thereby beating the Royal Observatory to the prize. Ernest Shackleton led Antarctic expeditions at the turn of the 20th century and was knighted for his accomplishments. Bobby Fisher became international chess champion. These men and others devote themselves in extraordinary ways to adventure, innovation, creation and entrepreneurship. Remarkably often, people like this, who simply don’t do the right thing, make the great discoveries and the great contributions. It's funny the way that is.

These people are "at the edges." They step out of the mainstream, wander off Main Street, and end up having a big impact on our society. In fact, we might posit that great contributions are made only at the edges of any subject, and never in the middle. Impact on a field, impact on society, impact in life is essentially always at the edges.

So how do you know where the edges are? Well the edges are lonely places, risky places, and often-criticized places. The edge is not found in a neighborhood that many would approve of. The edge is where most people rarely go.

Einstein said, "If at first an idea is not absurd, there will never be any hope for it." If people generally approve of where you are, you are likely in the middle and not at the edge. "Doing the right thing" will push you to the middle.

And this is the hard part, especially for you graduates, because of your great credentials and history of achievement:

The forces of society generally push high achievers toward the middle. Reward and award systems in our society that single out high achievers offer them memberships in honor societies and academies, give them prizes for research, corporate awards, service awards, raises, titles, and plenty of praise from family, friends and colleagues. For high achievers to walk away from such recognitions, such high praise, would take exceptional personal strength and conviction. Why walk away from success? Accordingly, most do not.

That may explain why a disproportionate number of people that impact our society greatly were not seen as high achievers early on. Early high achievers may have perceived that they had too much to risk getting out at the edge.

I recall when I was a new assistant professor of mechanical engineering here. A graduate student came to my office and said, "I'm an A+ student, I've passed my Ph.D. qualifying exam, I don't want any money, but I would like you to supervise my doctoral dissertation research on snow skiing." He wanted to discover why a snow ski turns. I said no. I wouldn't supervise him and he shouldn't investigate that problem. He was not supposed to work on things that are "fun." People wouldn't take him seriously; he wouldn't get a job; I wouldn't get promoted to tenure and the whole thing would be a disaster for both of us.

He went away, but came back a second time. Basically, we repeated our first conversation.

Finally, he came back a third time, this time visibly stressed. He said he had been through the entire department of some 50 plus faculty members, and was told no by everyone, for essentially the same reasons.

Then he asked me, "Why are you a professor anyway?" He was slightly more polite, but that was the essence of the question. I explained to him that in addition to my love of teaching and working with students that I enjoyed learning about how things work, developing a deeper understanding of physics and machines, and creating new and better things. It was a typical professorial response: Start with discovery and end with creation.

Then he asked, "Do you agree that the ski problem falls within that scope?" I did have to agree with him. Then he said, "The real reason that you advise me against working on this problem is that someone else believes it is not acceptable to work on. If you wanted someone else to tell you what to work on, you should be working in industry, not a university."

Now that was tough, very tough.

I had to agree with him and, of course, I had to agree immediately to supervise his work on skiing. When asked the right question, you are stuck with the answer.

I realized later that I had been advising this student against getting out at the edge. It was he who drove me to the edge and I'm thankful he did. By the way to end this story, I did get tenure and he did get a job— he joined the faculty at Stanford. Of course if he’d worked on something else for the Ph.D. research he might have been recruited to Berkeley. We’ll never know how high he could have gone. He was my first Ph.D. student at Berkeley, and my last will receive his Ph.D. degree today.

My call to you is "Think about getting out at the edge at least part of the time." Society needs you to do it. The best and brightest need to use their talents to better our society, to make an extraordinary impact. That will only happen at the edges.

Decide how much risk you are willing to take. Ten percent of your time? Halftime? Double-time for a few years? It's an individual decision that requires consideration of many personal factors. But make it yourself. If your brain feels full, then think with your heart. Be driven by your spirit–it's an awesome force.

Beware, or at least be aware, of society's push toward the middle, toward doing the right thing. Our forefathers could hardly have imagined what we have learned in the past 100 years, and so it will be for the century ahead. The frontier waiting to be opened by the next great discovery or creation could be anywhere, and most likely it will not be where we expect it — except that we expect that it will happen at the edges.

If there were an examination at the end of this address, this would be the time to recap its main points. But there is no exam–you can decide for yourself what the points are. After all, it's your Commencement Day, and you are on your own from here. It's funny the way that is.

Congratulations.