IN EARLY JUNE 2005, Steve Jobs emailed his friend Michael Hawley a draft of a speech he had agreed to deliver to Stanford University’s graduating class in a few days. “It’s embarrassing,” he wrote. “I'm just not good at this sort of speech. I never do it. I'll send you something, but please don't puke.”
The notes that he sent contained the bones of what would become one of the most famous commencement addresses of all time. It has been viewed over 120 million times and is quoted to this day. Probably every person who agrees to give a commencement speech winds up rewatching it, getting inspired, and then sinking into despondency. To mark the 20th anniversary of the event, the Steve Jobs Archive, an organization founded by his widow, Laurene Powell Jobs, is unveiling an online exhibit with a remastered video, interviews with some peripheral witnesses, and ephemera such as his enrollment letter from Reed College and a bingo card for graduates with words from his speech. “Failure,” “biopsy,” and “death” were not on the card, but they were clearly on Jobs’ mind as he composed his remarks. (If you somehow have never viewed this speech, maybe you should watch it in the video player below, then return to this account suitably verklempt.)
