Obituary Randy Pausch (1960–2008)

FORUM Obituary Randy Pausch (1960–2008) In the introduction to his book, The Last Lecture, advisor Andy van Dam, a caring educator and world Randy Pausch wrote, “engineering isn’t about perfect renowned leader in interactive computer graphics. Rec- solutions, it’s about doing the best you can with limited ognizing in Pausch the promise of a gifted teacher, resources” (Pausch & Zaslow, 2008). Working in the van Dam steered him toward an academic career. field of interactive computer graphics, Pausch applied Pausch attended graduate school at Carnegie Mellon this engineering principle to the building of computer University, earning his Ph.D. degree in 1988. interfaces that were elegant, intuitive, and accessible to Pausch was hired as an assistant professor of computer large numbers of people, including those with limited science by the University of Virginia in 1988, where he skills and limited means. Pausch loved technology, not was promoted to associate professor in 1993 and re- for itself, but for what it allowed him and others to do. mained until 1997. One of his first efforts at Virginia Employing today’s technologies, people can fly, lift was the development of the Simple User Interface Tool- great weights, see distant planets, talk to people around kit, SUIT (Pausch, Conway, & Deline, 1992). This the world, and explore virtual worlds that afford tele- toolkit exemplified Pausch’s desire to make graphical portation, time travel, and magic carpet rides. It is to programming easier by accommodating tools to the these latter possibilities—building virtual worlds that demands of the problem and the skills and intuitions of evoke experiences achievable by no other means—that the user. Pausch’s first venture into virtual reality, VR, Pausch devoted his academic life. He also held as a goal resulted in a highly influential paper, “Virtual Reality on that these experiences should have value; they should be Five Dollars a Day” (Pausch, 1991). In this paper, he useful and/or fun. demonstrated that a useable, head-mounted, head- Pausch was born in 1960 to Virginia and Fred tracked, VR system could be built for about $5,000, Pausch. Speaking of his upbringing by them, Pausch which was about two orders of magnitude less expensive would often say that he had won the parents lottery. than the state-of-the-art systems that were available at During his childhood, Pausch saw engineering hold this time. Consistent with his views about engineering, center stage in a world entrenched in a cold war. He “VR on $5/day” was far from a perfect solution, but was a child of the “space race,” which began when the for many applications, this inexpensive system sufficed Soviet Union launched the world’s first satellite in for the purposes at hand and allowed entry into VR re- 1957. During Pausch’s childhood, Americans were put- search for a host of new and eager scientists. ting considerable effort, resources, and pride into re- During this time at Virginia, Pausch and I formed a gaining their leadership in science and technology. close and lasting collaboration, for which I am exceed- Pausch wrote, “Men first walked on the moon during ingly grateful. We worked together using VR as a means the summer of 1969, when I was eight years old. I knew to study our complementary interests in human visual then that pretty much anything was possible. It was as if perception. As a visual scientist, my concern was to ex- all of us, all over the world, had been given permission ploit the medium’s potential to provide controllable, to dream big dreams” (Pausch & Zaslow, 2008). Pausch took his dreams to Brown University, where he earned a B.S. degree in computer science in 1982. Dennis R. Proffitt There he also won the mentor lottery by having as his Psychology Department University of Virginia Presence,. Vol. 18, No. 1, February 2009, 92–95 Charlottesville, VA 22904 © 2009 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology [email protected] 92 PRESENCE: VOLUME 18, NUMBER 1 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/pres.18.1.92 by guest on 01 October 2021 Proffitt 93 immersive contexts in which to study human percep- Pausch that with sufficient modification Alice could be- tion. Pausch’s interest was in providing the tools to come a teaching tool. Sparked by Wanda Dann and make this possible and in assessing the degree to which Steve Cooper’s use of Alice to teach introductory pro- VR evoked real-world perceptions. A question that gramming, Pausch worked to make Alice an engaging haunted VR at that time, and continues to do so today, teaching environment in which novice programmers was “What does it mean to be immersed in a virtual en- could learn to program. With Dann and Cooper, vironment (VE)?” “What does presence mean?” Pausch Pausch wrote a textbook, Learning to Program with Al- had little patience in debating these questions and in- ice (Dann, Cooper, & Pausch, 2003), that is currently stead sought to operationalize, quantify, and test the in use in hundreds of colleges and universities and over assertions that underlay these debates (Pausch, Proffitt, 100 high schools and middle schools (Kelleher et al., & Williams, 1997). In other studies, we directly com- 2008). A formal evaluation showed that taking an initial pared spatial perceptions of VEs with those obtained programming course using Alice improved grades in when viewing comparable real-world environments subsequent or concurrent introductory computer sci- (Gossweiler, Proffitt, Bhalla, & Pausch, 1995). A good ence courses and greatly increased the likelihood that example of Pausch’s work at this time can be found in a students would become computer science majors (Kelle- multidisciplinary collaboration that he and Ken Hinck- her et al.). A new version of Alice, Storytelling Alice, ley formed to build a neurosurgery planning worksta- was developed by Pausch’s final Ph.D. student Caitlin tion (Hinckley, Pausch, Proffitt, & Kassell, 1998). Kelleher with the aim of engaging middle school-aged When Pausch and Hinckley asked a senior neurosur- girls in programming—making programming not just geon, Neil Kassell, what he would like when planning easy, but also fun. The initial evaluations of Storytelling neurosurgery, Kassell replied that he would like to be Alice showed that girls freely chose to spend more time able to hold the brain in his hand and manipulate its programming with it than with the generic Alice pro- orientation. A virtual version of Kassell’s vision was real- gram (Kelleher, Pausch, & Kiesler, 2007). Following a ized by placing a VR tracker into the detached head of a sabbatical at Electronic Arts, Pausch gained permission toy baby doll and yoking the toy head’s manipulated to use the characters from The Sims 2 in the latest ver- movements to the displayed orientation of a 3D brain sion of Alice. This new addition will help realize image. Pausch’s twin goals of (1) making learning to program For good reasons, Pausch’s best known engineering easy and fun, and (2) providing the novice user with a legacy is the 3D interactive graphics programming envi- set of core skills that would transition into learning ronment that he developed and named Alice (Pausch et computer science. A constant collaborator on Alice has al., 1995). Alice began as an easy to learn 3D graphics been Dennis Cosgrove, and it is in his good hands that program that allowed users to rapidly build VEs. It was Alice’s future is held. used by Pausch’s research team to build VEs and to de- Pausch was instrumental in creating the DARPA pro- velop and assess innovative user interaction techniques gram, Augmented Cognition, which defined an approach (Pausch, Burnette, Brockway, & Weiblen, 1995; that has become an emerging field within the HCI dis- Durbin, Gossweiler, & Pausch, 1995). There was more ciplines. As its name implies, Augmented Cognition is to Alice, however, than even Pausch imagined during its an interdisciplinary approach in which technology— early development and use. including real-time functional brain imaging—is em- In 1997, Pausch moved to Carnegie Mellon Univer- ployed to bolster people’s cognitive abilities. At the sity as an associate professor and was there promoted to heart of this approach is Pausch’s vision of bringing to- full professor in 2000. At the time of his move to gether people from diverse backgrounds—engineers, CMU, Alice was viewed as an easy to learn program that neuroscientists, and psychologists —to solve problems allowed novices to build interesting 3D interactive VEs. that transcend the boundaries of any individual disci- Shortly after the move, however, it became apparent to pline. Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/pres.18.1.92 by guest on 01 October 2021 94 PRESENCE: VOLUME 18, NUMBER 1 Andy van Dam’s recognition of Pausch’s teaching solutions, it’s about doing the best you can with limited talent was validated repeatedly. During a sabbatical leave resources” (Pausch & Zaslow, 2008) was made when he at Walt Disney Imagineering Virtual Reality Studio in knew that he was dying and would not be able to help 1995, Pausch learned the effectiveness of creating multi- raise his children for much longer. In September of disciplinary teams of designers, storytellers, and graphi- 2007, he gave a Last Lecture at CMU, in which he did cal engineers for the purpose of creating VEs in which the best that he could to preserve his life’s lessons as people would be immersed, not only in a place, but also stories meant for his children. Videos of this lecture in a story. At the Disney Imagineering Studio, the story have been viewed by millions of people around the was derived from the popular animated movie, Aladdin.

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