Commencement 2020

It is a great shame that universities were unable to hold a regular commencement this year, and honor the achievement of our graduates, not only to complete a university degree, but to do so under nearly-unprecedented conditions, with their entire educational system up-ended in the middle of their final semester.

The following is the text of my speech to the graduates of the Illinois Tech Computer Science Department this year:

It is my great pleasure to welcome you all today. I am Shlomo Engelson Argamon, Interim Chair of the Computer Science Department at the Illinois Institute of Technology. 

None of us ever expected that your graduation would be like this—we should be together on campus, celebrating you and your accomplishments as you all truly deserve. I look forward to the day that we can invite you to return to campus for our next commencement, and I hope many of you can, so that I can congratulate you in person. 

Today is a day of celebration as we gather virtually to recognize your accomplishments and honor each of you as a 2020 Illinois Tech graduate of the Computer Science Department. I only wish we could now be together, with your parents, family, and friends, to share this great moment of your graduation. 

Congratulations! Your hard work at Illinois Tech has set the foundation for your future professional success. 

You are graduating into a world of enormous challenges – the reverberations from this pandemic will echo economically and socially for many years to come. And for you--your final year at Illinois Tech has sadly been disrupted, and you may soon or already be facing personal challenges as well. If you do, I pray you overcome them with grace and dignity.

Amidst all these challenges, you are also graduating Illinois Tech into the field that will be central to addressing them – indeed, without your field, we could not even have this event today. Ironically, computer scientists, the stereotypical socially-inept geeks, are the ones now enabling people to remain connected with one another in these difficult times.  

Computer science is not and can not just be pure technical brilliance walled off from the messiness of human relationships and interactions. The systems we create now mediate and shape human society in profound ways, both beneficial and harmful. 

Many of you, I expect, will become great innovators, as researchers, developers, entrepreneurs. I urge you to not get lost in the admittedly fascinating technical complexities of our discipline. Always consider carefully the larger “computational system” of people, and relationships, and organizations within which your work is embedded.

This is both a technical, and a moral, imperative.

Disinformation now is rampant, spread and incentivized as a side-effect of the algorithms that make social media efficiently monetizable—we are slowly starting to realize how self-driving car modes encourage reckless driver behavior—holes in system security inevitably lead to terrorizing children through internet-enabled baby monitors, or videoconferences through zoombombing, all for the lulz—and on and on.

The future of our field and its enormous effects on the world depend crucially on this fundamentally human perspective, which will affect not only the applications we develop but the very nature of the field itself. 

Illinois Tech was founded 130 years ago on the idea that a first-rate technical education could enable individuals to change their lives and the world for the better. We have endeavored to give you that education, the rest is up to you.

Graduates of 2020 – I cannot wait to see what wonders you each create. Dream high, and celebrate your successes, both large and small.

As of today, you are all Illinois Tech alumni. Bear that title proudly as you move on in your lives, and please stay in touch with the Computer Science Department, with Illinois Tech, and with one another. Wherever you may go, we at Illinois Tech will follow your future accomplishments with keen enthusiasm.