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We’re moving from a world of stuff, from the idea that there’s a finite amount of gold out there, a finite amount of almost anything out there. Throughout all of history, people fought over stuff: land, fuel, stuff. But in your generation, the most value that will be created isn’t stuff anymore. It really is ideas. The Internet is an abstraction, and the value of Google exceeds the value of all the car makers. In a world that’s about ideas, it’s not a zero-sum game. You don’t have to win by someone else losing, where you have the gold or oil or water, and somebody else doesn’t.
In a world of ideas, you all create and share those ideas and everybody has more ideas in the end, whether it’s a cure for cancer, or a way to make water drinkable, or a way to make energy that’s non-polluting. And whether you like it or not, you are moving for the first time into a world where ideas matter more than all the stuff there is. But those ideas have to come from educated people and they have to be used as a tool and not as a weapon. That’s the biggest change that’s happening.
We’re also facing a world where finally people are realizing we’re all going to succeed together. In this world where it’s not a zero-sum game, where four billion more people creating new ideas will make us all richer, not compete with us to make us all poorer, the leadership of the educated will help the rest. It is a world where ideas matter, where the educated people can lead and help and be cheerleaders for everybody else instead of being competitors. It’s a world where the rate of change for the positive could exceed anything you can imagine. The alternative to that is something that’s unimaginable.
So I would beg every educated person in this world to remember, every day when you get up, that you are an incredibly small minority of all humanity. And with all the privileges I understand it gives us, I think it gives us an enormous responsibility to be leaders that do the right things for the right reasons. And remember that you can be doing good while you are doing well. You’ll all go out and get good jobs. But you’ll make your living by what you do in those jobs. You’ll make your life by what you give.
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