The life and death of Aaron Swartz and why it matters. Part 1.

Aaron Swartz at Boston Wikipedia Meetup, 2009-08-18
(From Wikimedia Commons, the free media repository)

A couple of classes ago we saw the first half (and a little more) of the 2014 documentary feature "The
Internet's Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz", directed by Brian Knappenberger. And, for a millenial that spends most of his time online, and is studying a mayor in computer sciences, I´m guilty, like many others, of not knowing who Aaron Swartz was. And, let me tell you, he was a pretty big deal.

As soon as the film starts I was ready for not liking this guy, he was a gifted boy genius, heavily opinionated and responsible for the creation of Reddit (a page that, to put lightly, has image problems). People with that profile usually score low on the likeability scale, they can be read as pretentious and hard to connect to in a human level. But I was pleasantly surprised that I was dead wrong, yes he was heavily invested in his work, but also he cared a lot about the PEOPLE who surrounded him, and how his work affected them.

You see, Swartz was quite a pioneer of the modern internet, maybe not a founding father per-se, but his work went from RSS, a page that can be best described as a pre-Wikipedia, and the aforementioned Reddit, all at a very young age. Swartz was all about sharing information, his brothers, interviewed on the film, mention that, apart from computers, he had a passion for teaching. He will explain what he learned at school to his brothers, he will read the entire textbook before class, he will spend his time toying with cd-encyclopedias, he wanted all that information to be accessible to the world, and he saw in the internet a way to do so.

Swartz ideas of a free open access to information are what really propelled him as a public figure, he became political, and his movement is synonymous with progressiveness. Net-neutrality, witch is still being endangered by the way, is one the things that we can thank people like Aaron for. Even doe I personally don't advocate piracy (I'm pretty much for supporting the artists and creators) I can see why the current models can be advantageous to corporations and bad for regular consumers thats why Swartz turned a blind eye (sometimes even encouraged) piracy. I was reading a Pitchfork article that mentioned Swartz about the subject and I can see why his ideals where becoming as radical as they became.

He challenged the system, he took it to himself to free information, which put a big target on his head. Giant information companies, and governments even, hated Swartz, hated him because they saw in Swartz movement a threat of losing money from their greedy hands. This lead to his arrest in 2011.

Join me in part two, in which I'm going to talk about the second half of the film and will go in depth about the political aspect of his life, the trials, and his legacy.