In the Earth’s 4.5 billion year run, with 100 billion people who have lived and died, and with 7 billion of us here now ... Here you are. Yes, here you are ... alive at a time of potential extinction-level events ... a time when fewer and fewer people can cause more and more damage ... a time when science and technology may not hold all the answers, but are indispensable to any solution.

What are the odds that you get to be you, right now, The MIT class of 2016, with so much on theline?

There are potentially trillions of human beings who will someday exist whose fate, in large part,depends on the choices you make ... on your ideas ... on your grit and persistence and willingness to engage.

If this were a movie I were trying to pitch I’d be laughed out of every office in Hollywood.

Joseph Campbell himself — he of the “monomyth,” the ultimate hero’s journey — even hewouldn’t even go this far. Campbell would tell me to throttle this down ... lower the stakes.

But I can’t. Because this is fact, not fiction. This improbable thing is actually happening. There’smore at stake today than in any story ever told. And how lucky you are — and how lucky we are— that you’re here, and you’re you.

So I hope you’ll turn toward the problem of your choosing ... Because you must.

I hope you’ll drop everything ... Because you must And I hope you’ll solve it. Because you must.

This is your life, Class of 2016. This is your moment, and it’s all down to you.

Ready player one. Your game begins: now. Congratulations and thanks very much!