I’ve been thinking some more about Randy Pausch, the Carnegie Mellon professor whose inspirational “last lecture” became such a phenomenon over the past six months or so, and who just passed away this weekend from pancreatic cancer. I’ve written about the content of his lecture in a previous post, and again on the weekend when I heard of his death, but what I’ve been thinking about since then is how unique a phenomenon the Last Lecture video really is from a digital media point of view.

I think we take for granted sometimes how much the Web has changed our lives, in both large and small ways, and in some cases in small ways that only take on significance over time. Someone once said that people tend to over-estimate the effects of technology in the short term and under-estimate them over the longer term, and I think YouTube is a perfect example. We’ve all become accustomed to watching short clips of funny cats or skateboarders slipping and hurting themselves, or occasionally a music video or that kind of thing. No big deal, right?

But then along comes something like Randy Pausch’s last lecture, in which the almost irrepressibly upbeat professor and virtual-reality pioneer talks about achieving his dreams, and it becomes not just a viral YouTube hit, but crosses over to become a bona fide “real media” sensation, with appearances on Oprah and ABC and 20/20 and whatnot, followed by a book version of the lecture. But that’s not really the amazing part — the amazing part for me is that it became a phenomenon despite the fact that it is over an hour long. And not just that, but it features a guy doing nothing but talking. No cats. No nudity. No music.

Could something like Randy Pausch’s last lecture ever have become as widespread a phenomenon without YouTube and the Internet? I can’t see how. Maybe his lecture might have been videotaped and copies of the tape sent around to other professors, or to universities — or it might have shown up on PBS or the Discovery Channel (most likely after he had already passed away), where a couple of hundred thousand people might have seen it. He could have wound up on Oprah or Charlie Rose at some point, I suppose. But that’s just not the same.

Within weeks of his lecture — which I found out about just days after he delivered it, while reading the always wonderful Metafilter.com — Pausch’s video had tens of thousands of views, and within a month or two it had millions of them (it’s closing in on five million now). Even if you assume that not everyone watched the whole thing, I’m willing to bet that a substantial number watched enough to be touched by his message to some extent, whether they want to admit it or not. That is an incredibly powerful thing, when you think about it.

Like many people — millions of them, in fact — I was mesmerized by Carnegie Mellon computer science professor Randy Pausch’s now-famous “Last Lecture,” a video clip that began making the rounds on YouTube last September. I saw mention of it on Metafilter just a few days after he gave it, and eventually he wound up on Oprah and half a dozen other TV shows, and his lecture was even turned into a book (he dictated it over the phone to a Wall Street Journal writer).

Why? There’s nothing magical in it, particularly; just Randy talking about his life and how he learned to achieve his dreams of working for Disney (which he did) and flying in space (which he sort of did by riding the Vomit Comet). But I found it incredibly inspiring — in part because of the sheer joy he seemed to take in his life, even though he knew he was dying of pancreatic cancer, but also because of how he talks about the people who motivated and inspired him.

It is honest and funny and touching. I highly recommend that you take 45 minutes or so and watch the whole thing.

While browsing Metafilter — one of my favourite sites of all time — I came across the incredible story of Randy Pausch, a computer-science professor at Carnegie-Mellon and pioneer in the field of virtual reality who is dying of cancer. Even though he had about 12 tumors in his liver at the time he made this video presentation, and was given no more than three months to live, he appeared as healthy as any 46-year-old — and even dropped to the stage and did several one-handed pushups to prove it.

The video presentation, which he gave at Carnegie-Mellon to a packed auditorium, is called “The Last Lecture,” and is a tribute to his friends and colleagues, mentors and partners, his parents and his wife (the couple have three young children). He talks about his childhood dreams, and how he achieved or came close to achieving most of them — from being an astronaut (he flew on the Vomit Comet astronaut trainer) to writing an article in the World Book Encyclopedia and working at Disney as an Imagineer.

Along the way, he describes the lessons he learned in how to achieve your dreams, and how much fun it is to help others achieve theirs. Among other things, Pausch created a pioneering cross-disciplinary program in artificial reality at CMU, and also started the Alice project, which uses game design and video to help teach young students — and particularly young women — how to program and design video games.

I have to say that even without knowing Dr. Pausch, it’s difficult to watch the end of this video — when he effectively says goodbye to all of his friends, students and colleagues for the last time — without getting verklempt.