IP: Dave Farber's remarks upon being granted the degree of Doctor of Science

[Dave Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>]

The remarks I made after being awarded the honorary  degree of Doctor of Science at the 1999 Commencement of  the 
Stevens Institute of Technology yesterday. Side note, being a new Trustee of Stevens is giving me a new understanding 
of the problems a Trustee faces and the distance between many of the Trustees and the faculty I hope to help lessen the 
distance.

Dave



Good afternoon. I want to thank the President, Dr. Raveché, the Trustees and Faculty of Stevens for this honor.

I remember my early student days with mixed memories. Mixed because I almost flunked drafting!  I valued years at 
Stevens for giving me an education that introduced me to the breadth of the engineering profession and further insisted 
that I be exposed to the liberal arts, economics, and science.

While I was at Stevens, I was first was exposed to the beginnings of the computer age while working on an undergraduate 
experimental thesis with Dr. Strong of Chemistry in building what was certainly one of the first automated chemical 
analyzers.  The unit was programmed with a punched card one foot long by nine inches wide and used relays to do the 
logic.  It was fun and it worked!

When I was a senior I had intended to go to graduate school but instead ended up at Bell Laboratories.  As a young 
engineer, I was incredibly fortunate in being dumped into a pressure cooker of the leaders in electronics and the then 
just evolving world of computers.  I felt like a ball in a pin-ball game - endlessly bouncing into interesting ideas 
upon interesting projects.  .  My broad Stevens' education prepared me to be able to talk with and work with those 
leaders in science and engineering who were inventing the computer/communication revolution.

I came back to Stevens at night to take a Master's in Mathematics as well as to teach a course. Again my undergraduate 
education with considerable math made that feasible.

My career, as I look back at it to date, has been an adventure in recognizing and often discovering new fields and 
directions.  It has been an honor to work with the pioneers in many fields and being one in several areas myself.  It 
has been a joy to see my students, both undergraduate and graduate, go on to be leaders themselves in the new 
cyber-world.  It has been the joy of a father hen in watching these students engage in debate with each other as 
leaders and being proud of them.  Most of all it is the excitement of taking chances and seeing them pay off in helping 
to create the cyber-revolution we are engaged in or living in.

I was an early and I guess rather influential player in the evolution of the Internet.  As a teacher and researcher I 
pushed and pulled; some of my intellectual children were and are key players in this new-age.  We are revolutionizing 
the world, its technology and its economics.  We are frontier scientists trying to develop the cyber-culture while 
protecting our rights as Americans.

A great deal of my time is spent in the effort of creating a just, free, and open world on the Electronics Frontier.  
The worth of our technology must be measured against how it benefits the global society.

I have reminisced a  lot; so let me finish with two points.

The first is a recognition of all I owe to a wonderful wife - GG who not only followed me to weird places like 
California but encouraged me, a new father with a new house and a big mortgage, to take a chance and leave a stable job 
in industry to go to the academic world  - me, a non PhD! Her support then and now has been a major factor in my career.

The second is the debt I owe Stevens, not only for this honorary degree but more importantly for the education, broad 
and challenging, that prepared me for my wild ride.

What can I advise you, the new graduates? Think carefully before you become the expert in a small area of science.  Be 
sure you remain broad - read, think, interact, and most of all look for challenges in and outside your field.  You have 
the unique training to be able to do that.

And remember your debt to those who have helped you, to Stevens and its traditions, and your teachers.