Aaron Swartz: The Internet’s Own Boy

Travelling today so just a quick post. I finally got around to watching the documentary about Aaron Swartz that was released earlier this year after a successful Kickstarter campaign. It’s a great, if tragic, story and thoroughly recommended if you have even a passing interest in technology, Open Access,  Reddit, RSS, Creative Commons, hacktivism or any other of the myriad of other interests that he somehow managed to pack into his 26 years.

I was following the case being brought against him at the time and vividly remember reading the blog posts by Harvard Law Professor Larry Lessig (‘Prosecutor As Bully‘) and Cory Doctorow at the time as the news broke that he’d died. Almost two years after his death, attitudes towards freedom of information and surveillance have changed drastically in a post-Snowden era. The rest of us are simply left wondering where his ferocious intellect might have directed in today’s world.

It’s worth watching. Please do. As one review puts it, ‘it feels like the beginning of a conversation about Swartz and his legacy and not the final word“. There remain many unanswered questions.

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