People Should Know Aaron Swartz, An Internet Hacking Genius Who Took His Life
This story was inspired by Tim Denning, Medium.com’s top writer
The article
I started reading an article by Tim Denning. As of today, he is the number one writer on Medium.com by follower count. Number two is Gary Vaynerchuk. Number ten is Bernie Sanders.
This story is not about top writers. It’s about Aaron. It’s about the most influential hacker ever. As Tim put it, his impact was “once in a generation”.
I knew right away that I had seen the documentary. I remembered it being an incredibly moving story. I just rewatched it to help introduce others to Aaron’s life.
Key Takeaways
As viewers, we get to see many videos and pictures of Aaron as a young prodigy programmer.
When most children are just learning to read, Aaron was already writing code. One of his first programs, written with a brother, was a Star Wars trivia application.
Aaron was inspired by Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor the World Wide Web. Aaron was very young when the two first met.
Berners-Lee didn’t try to profit from the web, he gave it away for free. And that’s why we have the internet as we know it today. Again, Berners-Lee was an extremely important influence on Aaron.
To put it simply, Aaron didn’t like that important knowledge was locked away from the public in places like university libraries. He was an ethical pirate and wanted everyone to have access to the information.
I strongly encourage you watch the documentary yourself to see and learn more about the amazing, tragic story.
One fascinating detail, especially relevant to programmers out there, is that Aaron had a Python file called “keep_grabbing.py”. This is central to the story of how he got into legal trouble.
Guerilla Open Access Manifesto
In 2008, Aaron Swartz published “Guerilla Open Access Manifesto” and shared his views of why information needs to be free.
Here are a few passages from the document (click here to see the entire document):
“Those with access to these resources — students, librarians, scientists — you have been given a privilege. You get to feed at this banquet of knowledge while the rest of the world is locked out. But you need not — indeed, morally, you cannot — keep this privilege for yourselves. You have a duty to share it with the world. And you have: trading passwords with colleagues, filling download requests for friends.
…But all of this action goes on in the dark, hidden underground. It’s called stealing or piracy, as if sharing a wealth of knowledge were the moral equivalent of plundering a ship and murdering its crew. But sharing isn’t immoral — it’s a moral imperative. Only those blinded by greed would refuse to let a friend make a copy.
…We need to take information, wherever it is stored, make our copies and share them with the world. We need to take stuff that’s out of copyright and add it to the archive. We need to buy secret databases and put them on the Web. We need to download scientific journals and upload them to file sharing networks. We need to fight for Guerilla Open Access.
With enough of us, around the world, we’ll not just send a strong message opposing the privatization of knowledge — we’ll make it a thing of the past. Will you join us?”
Keep Aaron’s fight alive
Learn more about Aaron. Learn more about who he was and what he stood for. Please watch the documentary and join us.
