Pausch was many things, he built bridges between the sciences and the arts, confronted walls that he or others put in front of him, had the unrelenting curiousity of a child and insisted on having fun through it all.
He reached star status when his “Last Lecture” at Carnegie Mellon became a YouTube sensation.
The lecture was followed by a book of the same name, written with Wall Street Journal columnist Jeffrey Zaslow, who worked on the book from his home in West Bloomfield, Michigan.
He passed away July 25th, 2008 at too early an age from pancreatic cancer.
One of his last projects was Alice, a free and innovative 3D programming environment that makes it easy to create an animation for telling a story, playing an interactive game, or a video to share on the web. Alice is a teaching tool for introductory computing. It uses 3D graphics and a drag-and-drop interface to facilitate a more engaging, less frustrating first programming experience.
Become a kid again and try it out alone or with a young one you know:
http://www.alice.org/
And, take some time to listen to “The Last Lecture” on YouTube.
ABC is doing a 1-hour feature on his life, July 29th at 10 pm EST.
To all who confront walls, build bridges, and have
fun each step of the way!