Lee Shields Therapist Seattle
Psychotherapist and Counselor in Seattle, Washington  
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Leland Shields

2800 E. Madison, Suite 206
Seattle, WA 98112
Phone: (206) 568-0062
Fax: (206) 325-0098

Email:

Are Dreams Practical Today?

Dreams have long been and still are responsible for many breakthroughs in science and technology. Here is what Larry Page, the co-founder of Google, said during a commencement address about the role of a dream in his life:

"I have a story about following dreams. Or maybe more accurately, it's a story about finding a path to make those dreams real.

You know what it's like to wake up in the middle of the night with a vivid dream? And you know how, if you don't have a pencil and pad by the bed to write it down, it will be completely gone the next morning?

Well, I had one of those dreams when I was 23. When I suddenly woke up, I was thinking: what if we could download the whole web, and just keep the links and... I grabbed a pen and started writing! Sometimes it is important to wake up and stop dreaming. I spent the middle of that night scribbling out the details and convincing myself it would work. Soon after, I told my advisor, Terry Winograd, it would take a couple of weeks to download the web -- he nodded knowingly, fully aware it would take much longer but wise enough to not tell me. The optimism of youth is often underrated! Amazingly, I had no thought of building a search engine. The idea wasn't even on the radar. But, much later we happened upon a better way of ranking webpages to make a really great search engine, and Google was born. When a really great dream shows up, grab it!"

This was taken from an address given to the University of Michigan graduating class, May 2, 2009. For more about the speech, click here.

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