Aaron Swartz Rememberance Day This Monday

805 points

5 years ago

For the general public he was seen as just another hacktivist along with various hacktivist groups that were active around the time like lulzsec and anonymous. But for the wider internet community, he represents something much much more, especially post 2020 where we are all questioning many aspect of governance that we take for granted as the normal state of the world.

In November the eight of 1986 Aaron Swartz was born. While his early childhood was like any other kid, he showed early spark of someone who would be very consequential to internet culture.

One of his first website to be recognized by the public is "The Info Network" a user generated encyclopedia, created at the age of 12 years old which won the ArsDigita Prize.

But later on he was accepted into Y Combinator's founder program on a startup called infogami. While infogami failed to get further funding, his contribution to the wider Y Combinator, got him in touch with another fellow co-founder to work together on this small but potentially important firm known as Reddit.

If you are from Reddit or Hackernews, you will be very familiar with how the next few years will go for Arron as well and so no further introduction will be needed. (But you can follow further in his wiki page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz)

However what will be consequential to the wider public is his work as an tech activist fighting for the same rights and values that digital natives in the wider internet culture would fight for. Especially in the realms of copyright laws and the wider debate on digital access and freedom.

This includes writing Guerilla Open Access Manifesto, as well as filing a FOIA request to find out how Chelsea Mannings was treated after she was detained for her alleged role in the WikiLeaks leaks. In addition to to leaking PACER digital court records to improve public access, which had him investigated by the FBI for potential copyright infringements. And most importantly to rally the internet against Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA).

However it was tragically his efforts to push for open access to academic journals (much of which was publicly funded research) that may have costed him his life at 2008-12-13.

Eight years later, as we emerge from the global pandemic, it is about time we celebrate his life and reflect on his his short time with us. As well as reflecting on how his actions had inspired countless digital natives current and in the future to continuously push and fight for the right for information to be free and transparent.