Friday, February 8, 2013

postheadericon Some Thoughts On Aaron Swartz

Last weekend, unfortunately, was too much on the death of me. Friday afternoon, I discovered that a close relative had died, and had spent time talking with family members, crying, thinking how I could fly across the country for a funeral, then I finally had enough and was about to close and go to sleep, when it became an email from a friend told me that Aaron Swartz had committed suicide. And suddenly there was more to think about death very differently. These days, I thought a lot about both my parent and Aaron - two very different people who probably share the end date of their lives. I cry both, but Aaron was a public figure and relevant to what we write here, I wanted to write something about it, and the area of ??mourning for my brain trying to figure out how many people mourning at the same time.

Aaron did not know everything right, but I knew him. I have read many stories of those who knew him very well and is very moving. But I wanted to share my story short, this is what keeps running through my head. In my mind, there is a key moment that I still think Aaron. One of them is the first time I met him. I can not the exact time, but I think it was ten years ago, at a conference in Santa Clara (I remember the hotel). He was sitting at a table, and
wow, being young
. Just like the girl in the photo of Richard Gibson, Aaron sent his own website, showing himself to speak with Larry Lessig in 2002 - at the age of 15 years.

knew at the time that was one of the creators of one of the versions of RSS (and that he and Dave Winer has failed because an argument about this). And I remember hearing he was young. But seeing child
sitting was really surprising. I spoke briefly at the event, and was immediately impressed by how strong it was. I also remember using "launch" Creative Commons - and I thought, almost twice her age, who had so little.


started reading your blog shortly after, it was an interesting mix of technical personnel policy philosophical content. When he started at the University of Stanford, something about your posts were
captivating

and

horrible

the same time - describe in great detail the kind of thoughts that many of us have when you go to college for the first time and we try to understand how and where we stand in the world. What I found strange is that because
everything else

he had done, my mind defects on the assumption that he was mature in all aspects of his life. But he was still a child.
Blog
I remember most is maybe a month or two after his arrival at Stanford, and he tells the story in question - again, in the fascinating and horrifying detail - on connecting it to a girl. My memory is fuzzy on that point - and a very cursory spin through your blog is not the message - but I remember she joked about being famous, causing the usual kind of awkwardness that comes with first makeout session time, but all described in detail. I also vaguely remember some monitoring, indicating that the girl was mortified by the publication of reports on the meeting.



was Aaron, order his life in public. It is perhaps more common these days, but it certainly was relatively new at the time,

and

was disjointed from the "professional" Aaron, was both. I thought ... "Yes, he is just a kid."



But the child grows. He left Stanford, joined YCombinator class first, which at first did not go away, but eventually led to joining Reddit earlier. Here and there, he continued to appear, always doing something interesting. The next time I met him was in 2009, when the FBI investigated him for daring to download a large number of public documents of the court PACER. PACER is well over $ 0.10/page (at the time was $ 0.08) documents remain in the public domain. Many people find it boring - and Aaron was a true crusader for the right to information. So when he heard that some libraries have been experimenting with free PACER as a trial, was to create a perl script and I had to go through a large number of documents, download them to collect. Over time, the FBI realized that this was not the case offers free access to public use is legal.
Obviously, the announcement of his latest legal problems. over the past two years, Aaron and I sent from time to time. He and I were the only two (with Senator Wyden) seemed really concerned by the predecessor of SOPA / PIPA called COICA, and he talked about helping more people aware of the problems of the bill. And then, when SOPA / PIPA arrived, we were in contact through the efforts against it (and many others). But I also remember the last two times I've heard of Aaron. Last summer, suddenly, he wrote to say he had run through a minor (but annoying) any technical error Techdirt, and suggested how to fix it. And then, in October, when he finally got his FOIA request turned on ICE domain seizures, they sent me to know. Never contacted him directly about his own case in progress, but I remember being surprised and impressed (and less surprised once I thought about it) that he had continued to advance the causes of its activists although facing trial for one of them.

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