Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T

Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T

So if anything I am to propose seems impossible, don’t worry, you don’t need to tell me-- I’ve heard it before.

Spending so much time around death did nothing to cure me of fear. What it did do, however, was teach me. It didn’t teach me how to prevent fear and it didn’t teach me a foolproof way of overcoming once it got in my way. But it taught me that I couldn’t let fear be my ruler.

When I was diagnosed with Neuroblastoma, there were about thirty other kids being treated with me. Today, only one other boy is left. All of those kids, those kids who were my friends, my surrogates, and my siblings-in-arms...they never got a chance to go out and live.

I’m still afraid of so many things. I’m afraid of growing up, I’m afraid of never growing up, I’m afraid that tomorrow will be worse than today, I’m afraid of not making a difference--the list could eat up a few more pages yet. But what I’m afraid of more than anything, though, is not doing those kids justice. I’m lucky enough that I don’t have to fight for my life anymore, but you can be damn sure that I’m gonna keep fighting for theirs, and the lives of those like them. I’m going to fight for them, because they can’t fight for themselves. I’m going to fight for them, because I’m one of the lucky ones-- I’m one of the lucky ones, born with access to health care, to higher education and free information, to clean water and plentiful food. I’m one of the lucky ones, with two hands and a voice and a bill full of rights, and I’m gonna use them. The children of tomorrow deserve freedom, freedom from injustice, from disease, from hunger, from war...and in order to secure these freedoms for them, we must first secure the freedom of information.

I remember the beautiful courage that was always in their eyes and their hearts, and hope swells in my chest with the thought that maybe we can make a difference, that when we’re done we’ll look back and see an era of cruel barbarism gone by, and we’ll look forward and see horizons bright beyond our greatest imaginings. That’s what makes me brave enough to do anything. I know that if we stand together, united in mind and purpose, we can save our children, the children of today and of countless unknown tomorrows. I do not need to hold my fear at bay with blind hope and desperate optimism, for I can conquer it with a certainty. We can cure the sick and clothe the cold, feed the hungry and educate the ignorant. We can do anything, if we set our minds to it and work together.

We put a man on the moon. We put a man on the moon, ten years from when we decided to do it. What could we do today, with all of our technology, with ten years of solid cooperation? What could we accomplish, if we were not afraid of ourselves, of each other, of the possibility of failure?

I don’t know about you, but I think that we could save the world.

Because we are the ones the world has been waiting for.

We are the ones who will do the things that must be done, the things that should’ve been done a long time ago. We are the ones who have seen the light of reason and common sense, and have seen through the divisive, destructive selfishness of our elders.

We are not our parents. We are not those who came before us. The potential that lies ahead is unrivalled in human history. Potential for nearly unimaginable greatness, and potential for unfathomable carnage.

When I was diagnosed with Neuroblastoma, the survival rate was less than 10 percent. Today it is nearly 30 percent. If I had been born ten years earlier, I almost certainly would not have survived.

We live in an age that is absolutely full of wonder, an era of wild imaginings and everyday miracles, the Information Age. To those of us born into it; nothing could be clearer: information must be free. More than 10 years ago, the 1.4 ton supercomputer Deep Blue beat Grandmaster Gary Kasparov at chess. Today, we can fit the processing power of that 1.4 ton supercomputer onto a chip the size of your thumbnail. In 2010, 1.8 billion people were connected to the Internet--roughly the same amount of humans living on the planet in the 1920s. In 1968, one transistor cost one dollar. In 2010, one dollar could purchase 50 million transistors. We live in exponential times. In 2002, digital storage capacity overtook analogue capacity, and we entered the Digital Age. As of 2007 almost 94 percent of our memory is in digital form.

Now, the Digital Reformation is coming, and we will be its makers, the new vanguard of humanity’s bright tomorrow, we the people, we the users, we the free.

And so the efforts we make today will be magnified unimaginable through ten hundred thousand tomorrows-- so too will our failures, but none will reverberate with more chilling effect than a failure to try. I fear that our country is being walked on the edge of fate’s razor, and precious little attention is being paid to where our steps will lead us. We must take heed of the signs surrounding us, and we must endeavour to look forward and to consider our actions with the daring wisdom of those faced with a difficult path and precious few alternatives.  

In the days to come, we will stand at the crossroads of the infinite, a tipping point, one of those precious few moments in the vast stretches of humanity’s history where the actions of a dedicated few can dictate the course of all mankind.

So we must take a moment to ask ourselves an important question: what is the future we want to live in?

Is it a future divided and bloodied by endless strife, fueled by willful ignorance and petty disagreement? Is it a future dominated by dizzying new heights of thoughtless greed and unthinking self-absorption, a future of zero sum, where the gain of one man must be taken as the loss of another? Is it a future where the unrestrained freedom of the few is bought at the cost of the liberty of the many and where the happenstances of birth, the chaotic lottery of genetics and lineage and class and geography, shall determine the worth and the course of a child’s life?

Or is it a future where the grand possibilities of cooperation have been recognized and the untold bounties of our combined efforts realized?  Is it a future where those in need are given the help they need, the endless varieties of help that we all sometimes need in order to be able to help ourselves? Is it a future full of compassion and brotherhood, where the first thought is not “whose fault is this?”, but rather, “how can we make it better”? Is it a future where we give all people our respect, not because of the luck of their birth or even just for great deeds they have accomplished, but simply because they are human beings and they deserve it? Is it a future where we strive to be our best and to accomplish humanity’s impossible dreams, or where we merely grasp in vain at what seems best for ourselves?

I know what future I want, and I know that I am prepared to shed my sweat as well as my blood to bring it about.

So, I suppose that actually leaves us with two very important questions.

What is the future we want to live in?

And how hard are we willing to fight for it?

Many of us have become jaded and cynical, and not wit