Nathaniel Borenstein ’80, Doctor of Science
Nathaniel Borenstein ’80 received an honorary Doctor of Science at Grinnell College Commencement 2013.
About Nathaniel Borenstein ’80
Great innovators don’t simply create new things; they anticipate our future needs and solve problems almost before we realize they existed. Thanks to his groundbreaking work, Borenstein has helped make communication in the digital age simpler and more powerful.
After graduating from Grinnell with degrees in math and religious studies and earning a Ph.D. in computer science from Carnegie Mellon University, Borenstein joined Bellcore. While there, he developed the MIME protocol that allows people to send email attachments. In 1992, he sent the first-ever MIME message, which features a photo and sound file of Bellcore’s barbershop quartet, the Telephone Chords.
Borenstein has also been involved in entreprenurial ventures. He co-founded First Virtual Holdings — the world’s first “cyberbank” — and started NetPOS.com in 2000. He has written three books, including Programming As If People Mattered, a book that readers praise for its humor and timeless principles. His software projects, including metamail and Safe-Tcl, have been used by millions of people worldwide. He currently works as chief scientist for Mimecast.
Borenstein is known as a dedicated social activist. In 1990, he received the New York University Olive Branch Award for an essay he wrote about peace. He is past president of the Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility and was the primary author of the One Planet, One Net campaign. In addition, he has served on the national boards of the Institute for Global Communications and Peace Action. He has been a committed vegetarian for more than 40 years for pacifist and ethical reasons and is frequently listed among the world’s famous vegetarians.
For his work on moving digital technology forward and for his commitment to justice and peace everywhere, Grinnell College is pleased to recognize Nathaniel Borenstein ’80.
Acceptance
Transcript
Thank you. I can't begin to say how grateful I am for this honor or for the hospitality that Grinnell has shown me and my family this weekend. I will always feel at home here.
The visions that drive us, even the most technical ones, are the link between idealism and action. Such visions have never been in short supply at Grinnell. And I hope all of you are eager to apply your own idealism to make the world a bit better.
I have just a small bit of advice. Your capacity for dreams is unlimited. That means that it is almost always a mistake to get too attached to any single dream. Just as chance favors the prepared mind, your ability to achieve great things depends on your flexibility to match your dreams to the opportunities you actually encounter.
In 1980, a few months after I was sitting more or less exactly where you are sitting now, I went to grad school and discovered the Internet. It was an amazing thing, an interconnection of over 100 computers, one of them all the way over in England. It was astonishing. It was so cool that most of the people working on it seemed to think it finished. It was an amazing resource for elite universities and the Department of Defense. How much further could it go?
I didn't leave Grinnell with a burning desire to be an Internet pioneer. I had never even heard of it. Believe it or not, what I wanted was to build a machine with a soul.
Yeah, really.
I had visions of deep philosophical discussions with artificially intelligent machines. But fate had given me a remarkable opportunity, and I managed, barely, to be flexible enough to change dreams. I had spent my junior year in Israel, in Jerusalem, where the cost of communication at that time meant that I never once called home in the entire year. Airmail was my most advanced communication method. And 15 months later I was on the Internet. Over time, in lieu of robotic theologians, I become passionate about better connecting the world.
Fate provides the opportunity that is the backdrop for our dreams, visions and achievements. You have to start by knowing where you stand. A decade later, when I was working on the MIME protocol, I was surrounded by people who didn't see the point. Over and over I was asked, why do you care so much about putting multimedia data on the net?
My standard answer, which was intended to humanize the whole thing, was "Someday I am going to have grandchildren — they're over there — and I want to get pictures of them by email."
Almost everybody who heard that laughed. But I was lucky, quite lucky, luckier than most, in that that no one found my vision so threatening that they actively opposed it. So I didn't have active opposition. Two more decades later, MIME is now used roughly a trillion times a day. Only the very, very best of those uses are actually pictures of my grandchildren. Most of the rest, as you well know, are useless garbage. Few of them are horrible, offensive or dangerous material. And even worse, perhaps, are the few that use that nasty stuff as an excuse for scary government spying and censorship.
I am uncomfortable when the people give me credit for the good aspects of this, because I played exactly the same role for the bad. It seems to me that it is easier to change the world than it is to be sure it was a change for the better. This is the kind of question I really would like to discuss with a robotic theologian.
So my advice to you is simple.
Expect surprises.
Dream the biggest dreams you can possibly wrap your head around.
Be open-minded about how you will get to where you want to go, be clear-sighted about who might oppose you, and be opportunistic about the possibilities your life presents.
Don't be surprised that when success comes it might not look much like what you expected.
I want to thank my family for being here today and for everything.
I especially want to thank Mr. Walker and Mr. Kasimow, my advisors when I was here, who opened new worlds for me then and honor me by their presence today.
Most of all, I want to congratulate the Class of 2013 on this hard-won milestone and well-deserved celebration.
With a mixture of idealism, opportunism, and flat-out paranoia, the best time in your life should be starting right about now.
Thank you.