14 ms·

Aaron Swartz wanted to save the world. Why couldn’t he save himself?

106 points by woodhull 14y ago

michalu 14y ago
Seems like writing about Aaron Swartz still generates traffic.
j-kidd 14y ago
Great article. The most interesting part for me is that the JSTOR servers couldn't sustain continuous download from a wireless connection. If only they have more competent developers...
Yuioup 14y ago
I'm kinda gettig tired of all these Aaron Swartz posts. There I said it.
- nsomaru 14y ago
  I think it's important that awareness of this is maintained. Not so much for "Swartz" himself, but for the potential this has to reform copyright in the U.S, and thus encourage others to follow suite
- shock 14y ago
  Therein lies the power of the oppressors: the public attention span to any one subject is severely limited. I admit to also getting tired, but I wish it weren't so, because it doesn't seem we've accomplished much. The petition has stalled and no reforms have been made.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
  - corporalagumbo 14y ago
    Welcome to 2013 and the sound and fury of insta-activism. Welcome also to 2012 (KONY) and 2011 (Occupy). Am I missing anything?
    - panacea 14y ago
      "Am I missing anything?" Stop SOPA?
      - corporalagumbo 14y ago
        Ah yes. Sometimes the mob does have teeth.
- raldi 14y ago
  Yeah, but this is by far the best-researched one I've seen. The writer could've crapped something out in a hurry a month ago, but instead took the time to focus on quality. That deserves our applause. Most of the previous coverage made it sound like Aaron was instrumental in the design of RSS, for example. That wasn't really the case, and the article is the first I've seen to get that right. On the other hand, he did play a true role in the creation of Markdown, and the article gives him fair credit for that. And I believe this is the most detailed account to date of Aaron's time at YC, which I found to be really, really interesting. If you read only one section of the piece, that's the one I'd recommend.
  - exodust 14y ago
    I think you're right. This article is the new benchmark in Aaron Swartz articles. A late entry, but has completely obliterated the field. Anyone thinking of writing a Swartz article take note, the bar is high. You'll need a team of people and a decent budget to approach the same quality. Good luck.
- nikcub 14y ago
  I almost didn't click on this story because I thought the same, but it turns out that this feature is a lot more detailed and interesting than all of those other stories (which were all rushed out) combined.
- bad_user 14y ago
  Dude, then don't read them. A good hacker died who's death could have been avoided. Some people feel the need to raise awareness about it. I personally don't mind, as these articles are far less annoying to me than the latest industry's farts and could actually lead to some change.
- rdl 14y ago
  I'm looking forward to the Abelson MIT report; other than that I don't anticipate any new information, and thus no "news" value.
xijuan 14y ago
I know many of you are getting tired of articles about him. But I still find this article really interesting!
dylangs1030 14y ago
"Aaron Swartz wanted to save the world, so why couldn't he save himself?" ...Really? There are implicit assumptions in that title, and the way in which it was presented, which I find somewhat disrespectful. Why do we need to question that he couldn't "save himself"? Why do we need to assume he had that responsibility at all? And why does attempting to save the world beg the question of inability to save oneself? The answer: it's just a title to get you to read it, hoping to have enough pathos that you don't think too critically about it. Why do we force ourselves to take on the burden of overanalyzing the man? It's obviously a sad passing, but people are dwelling on it in what I believe to be the wrong way. Stop questioning and just appreciate for its own sake. It wasn't preventable. At least not for the reporters and readers of these articles. And I'm sure his loved ones are not appreciating news articles that implicitly try to find something wrong - it delays peace.
- intended 14y ago
  The full title is: "The idealist: Aaron Swartz wanted to save the world, so why couldn't he save himself" The article itself, is good journalism in the in-depth detailed vein. After finishing it, I found the question in the title to be relevant. There was no over-analysis of the man. edit: missing quotation marks.
  - dylangs1030 14y ago
    I agree with you, I have no difficulty with the article itself. The article was well-written. And while this is admittedly subjective, I find the title itself to invite the sort of things I mentioned above, borderline to link-bait.
throwawayn00b 14y ago
>girlfriend ....aaaaand there he had it 100 better than me already. Being a sociopath gets lonely sometimes. Oh well there is always more free porn.
guard-of-terra 14y ago
If you ever played computer games you will know: Having one healer you can heal everyone but that healer; Having two healers you can heal just everyone.
roel_v 14y ago
Here's an only tangentially related question I've wondered about several times now, reading various articles about this case: his girlfriend's last name is "Stinebrickner-Kauffman", and consistently so. I know of Spanish customs where children get the last names of both parents, but these names don't sound Latino. Is it customary for (sorry if I'm making a wrong assumption there) Israeli/Jewish people to take both last names as well, or had she been married before? (again not to be stalkerish, I don't really care if she had been married - I'm just wondering if there are other cases than in Spain where it's customary to take the name of both parents).
- zb 14y ago
  It's not unusual for this to occasionally happen in English-speaking countries, though it is not ubiquitous in the way it is in Spain. Also note that the two names don't necessarily come from her 2 parents; it's quite possible (indeed, likely) that she inherited that name through several generations.
- FaUaCaKcYaOaU 14y ago
  Well this has got to be the most autistic reply in here.
  - roel_v 14y ago
    Sorry if it came across that way - it surely wasn't meant as prying into these people's details. I was just wondering about how people end up with the names they have.
- tokenadult 14y ago
  Here's an article on surname patterns in the United States, previously submitted for HN discussion: http://www.npr.org/2012/07/19/156923573/when-hyphen-boy-meets-hyphen-girl-names-pile-up http://www.npr.org/2012/07/19/156923573/when-hyphen-boy-meet...
  - roel_v 14y ago
    Oh that's interesting, missed that the first time around, thanks.
danso 14y ago
Despite the weekly articles and coverage since Aaron's death, this is by far the best of the pieces, especially in terms of detail. I think even Aaron's haters will think it's the best, as it dispels a lot of the exaggerations that have cropped up around Aaron's material accomplishments. But even in this more realistic, nuanced light, the tragedy of his suicide seems even more profound. There's no easy answers or conclusions, though this piece does the best job I've seen so far of explaining the political tensions and context leading up to Aaron's prosecution and death. Definitely a worthwhile read, even after reading thousands of other words on the subject. The OP downplays Aaron's role at Reddit considerably, to the point where it sounds like he did nothing at all except dream about social activism before taking the money and running. But even if he wasn't the full time engineer, wasn't his contribution in converting Reddit to web.py considered noteworthy toward the success/maintain ability of the site (at least at its early stage)? http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/rewritingreddit http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/rewritingreddit Edit: this was discussed in the Reddit thread five years ago though not really conclusively answered http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/1octb/reddit_cofounder_aaron_swartz_discusses_how_he/c1odpo http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/1octb/reddit_cof...
- panacea 14y ago
  reddit hasn't seen fit to include his avatar in the 'reddit alumni' http://www.reddit.com/about/team/ http://www.reddit.com/about/team/
xijuan 14y ago
I like all the stories about him. It is like seeing him from a different angle every time. Pieces by pieces, I start to see the whole picture. I feel I understand more of him each time. But at the same time, I feel there are more and more things I still don't know about him.
LatvjuAvs 14y ago
Maybe he did, only our reservation of what he did prevents us to recognize that.
smogzer 14y ago
Could the guy responsible for making the contents of his hd available online do it so. Use the dd command by the way, don't just copy files.
FaUaCaKcYaOaU 14y ago
Suicide is the coward's way out. What he did is unacceptable. You all love him and you appreciate what he did and you hurt because he died, I respect that, but committing suicide is the ultimate cowardice, you hurt those who stay and you go out the easy way. If you think that suicide is a solution for you please seek help urgently. WHEN YOU DECIDE TO KILL YOURSELF YOU'VE FINALLY FREED YOURSELF TO DO ANYTHING YOU EVER DREAMED OF. IF YOU WERE WILLING TO DIE, THEN YOU ARE WILLING TO GO TO AFRICA AND HELP THE POOR, GO JOIN DOCTORS SANS FRONTIERS AND GO HELP THE SICK. DON'T BE A COWARD AND DON'T KILL YOURSELF. Aaron Swartz was much more valuable alive and what he did is unacceptable, there is no justification for what he did.
corporalagumbo 14y ago
Reading this I kept shaking my head and thinking "what a sad little boy/man." Everything about his life makes me cringe: the awkward adolescent photos, his gravitation towards adult "friends," his dependence on a largely analytical basis for relationships and connections, the endless dissatisfaction and detachment, the fruitless big dreams, the inability to focus and work on one objective, the recklessness, the grueling self-analysis and self-exposition, the anger and the impotence... I think, from reading this, that Aaron was a person with something missing inside of him. To compensate, he tried to change everything around him - everything but himself. People like that have poor odds in life. When the world resists their efforts and they are forced to acknowledge the limits of their agency, their big dreams of quick change come crashing down. They can find themselves with little to retreat to in the aftermath.
- stretchwithme 14y ago
  I'm sure a lot of this is true, but some of it seems like you're casting him in a much more negative light than is fair. He did accomplish some things. I don't think he had something missing inside of him. I think he had some mistaken beliefs but probably would have figured those out eventually if he hadn't taken such a radical step.
- etherael 14y ago
  It sounds like you're disappointed in him for not succumbing to aspects of the modern world which could fairly be described as diseases. I understand this is a widespread and basically normal opinion, but I don't understand how people can hold it without being aware of how subjective and ridiculous it is. It would be like going back to the time of Galileo and Giordano Bruno and commenting how sad it was that they couldn't just make nice with the powers that be and toe the line like everyone around them, and how much more fulfilled and happy they would have been if that were the case. The world needed changing then, and it needs it now. To ignore this is to totally miss the point of this entire episode.
  - corporalagumbo 14y ago
    Disappointed? Huh? What are you talking about? Aaron was unhappy his entire life. He behaved recklessly, attracted criminal prosecution, and capped it all of by killing himself. Do you find that noble? I don't. I think he failed: failed to see the world realistically, failed to direct his thoughts and energies in a constructive manner, and failed to achieve much of anything. He puffed himself up and charged into something that didn't budge, and then he lost control. That's not noble to me at all. Just sad. As for: >aspects of the modern world which could fairly be described as diseases. Can you elaborate? (And do you mean that these aspects behave similarly to pathological infections in organisms or to epidemiological dynamics among populations?) And >Galileo Bad comparison. Galileo was explicitly ordered by the Catholic Church not to "hold or defend" the Copernican system. I.e. the dominant social power of that time and place decided they didn't like the concept, and they suppressed efforts to discuss and spread it. When Galileo edged around the constraint, they clamped down even harder. It was a clear cut case of a social power deciding to restrict free speech to prevent an idea from even being thought about. In contrast, there is no dominant social power in modern times. No one is in even a remotely comparable position in 2013 to suppress ideas. You and I are free to discuss copyright liberation or whatever we want. Aaron was free to write blogs, tracts, hand out pamphlets, send letters to politicians, make websites, etc etc etc. No one suppressed him in any of those activities. It is only when he crossed the line into illegal behaviour that he was prosecuted - according to open, democratically-developed laws and prosecutorial guidelines - all subject to normal processes of democratic oversight. >The world needed changing then, and it needs it now. Dangerous language in my opinion. Nothing "needs" anything. Deciding that the world "needs" changing means you set up a very rigid condition for success. And this is what I think happened with Aaron: inevitably people who think the world needs changing run into roadblocks, which their rigidity does not prepare them for. Then, failing to make the changes they believe are necessary, they fail to meet their rigid victory condition - and because of its rigidity, they fail, in their own opinion, absolutely. Which is devastating, and in Aaron's case, seems to have pushed him past his limits. A healthier perspective is that the world might be better with some tweaks - but it will probably never be perfect, and you should accept that you might not be able to do everything you want - and so on and so on. Aaron could have done with a bit of that perspective I reckon. How about you? As far as I'm concerned, all of Aaron's convictions and all of the bickering about the technicalities of the case are red herrings here. The fact that so many people haven't stopped to think harder about all this, and have instead jumped on the instant rage bandwagon is one of, if not THE real issue, I think. It speaks to a real trend of snap-judgement reactionary groupthink, which seems to be prevalent in contemporary internet culture. The angry people yelling about democracy and shouting dissidents down are the real danger to open society.
corporalagumbo 14y ago
The comment thread, by the way, is fantastic. Entertaining seeing what a relatively non-tech crowd (with a few nuts sprinkled in for good measure) has to say about all this.
- corporalagumbo 14y ago
  E.g. - from user Catfitz: "You've put your finger on something I've felt a long time about life and death of Swartz and his case -- there's an authoritarian arrogance there about hacking and stealing 4 million articles to decide for other people, the JSTOR system and the universities and scholars who participate in it, how they should live -- and be forcibly "liberated" as he "expropriates from the expropriators" like a common Bolshevik. This is dressed up in so much talk of "free" and "open" that people forget that it bears all the signs of technocommunism -- everyone is to be forced to work for free and share everything in a collective farm. How will costs be met?"

106 points by woodhull 14y ago

Seems like writing about Aaron Swartz still generates traffic.

Great article. The most interesting part for me is that the JSTOR servers couldn't sustain continuous download from a wireless connection. If only they have more competent developers...

Yuioup 14y ago

I'm kinda gettig tired of all these Aaron Swartz posts. There I said it.

nsomaru 14y ago
I think it's important that awareness of this is maintained. Not so much for "Swartz" himself, but for the potential this has to reform copyright in the U.S, and thus encourage others to follow suite
shock 14y ago
Therein lies the power of the oppressors: the public attention span to any one subject is severely limited. I admit to also getting tired, but I wish it weren't so, because it doesn't seem we've accomplished much. The petition has stalled and no reforms have been made.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- corporalagumbo 14y ago
  Welcome to 2013 and the sound and fury of insta-activism. Welcome also to 2012 (KONY) and 2011 (Occupy). Am I missing anything?
  - panacea 14y ago
    "Am I missing anything?" Stop SOPA?
    - corporalagumbo 14y ago
      Ah yes. Sometimes the mob does have teeth.
raldi 14y ago
Yeah, but this is by far the best-researched one I've seen. The writer could've crapped something out in a hurry a month ago, but instead took the time to focus on quality. That deserves our applause. Most of the previous coverage made it sound like Aaron was instrumental in the design of RSS, for example. That wasn't really the case, and the article is the first I've seen to get that right. On the other hand, he did play a true role in the creation of Markdown, and the article gives him fair credit for that. And I believe this is the most detailed account to date of Aaron's time at YC, which I found to be really, really interesting. If you read only one section of the piece, that's the one I'd recommend.
- exodust 14y ago
  I think you're right. This article is the new benchmark in Aaron Swartz articles. A late entry, but has completely obliterated the field. Anyone thinking of writing a Swartz article take note, the bar is high. You'll need a team of people and a decent budget to approach the same quality. Good luck.
nikcub 14y ago
I almost didn't click on this story because I thought the same, but it turns out that this feature is a lot more detailed and interesting than all of those other stories (which were all rushed out) combined.
bad_user 14y ago
Dude, then don't read them. A good hacker died who's death could have been avoided. Some people feel the need to raise awareness about it. I personally don't mind, as these articles are far less annoying to me than the latest industry's farts and could actually lead to some change.
rdl 14y ago
I'm looking forward to the Abelson MIT report; other than that I don't anticipate any new information, and thus no "news" value.

xijuan 14y ago

I know many of you are getting tired of articles about him. But I still find this article really interesting!

dylangs1030 14y ago

"Aaron Swartz wanted to save the world, so why couldn't he save himself?" ...Really? There are implicit assumptions in that title, and the way in which it was presented, which I find somewhat disrespectful. Why do we need to question that he couldn't "save himself"? Why do we need to assume he had that responsibility at all? And why does attempting to save the world beg the question of inability to save oneself? The answer: it's just a title to get you to read it, hoping to have enough pathos that you don't think too critically about it. Why do we force ourselves to take on the burden of overanalyzing the man? It's obviously a sad passing, but people are dwelling on it in what I believe to be the wrong way. Stop questioning and just appreciate for its own sake. It wasn't preventable. At least not for the reporters and readers of these articles. And I'm sure his loved ones are not appreciating news articles that implicitly try to find something wrong - it delays peace.

intended 14y ago
The full title is: "The idealist: Aaron Swartz wanted to save the world, so why couldn't he save himself" The article itself, is good journalism in the in-depth detailed vein. After finishing it, I found the question in the title to be relevant. There was no over-analysis of the man. edit: missing quotation marks.
- dylangs1030 14y ago
  I agree with you, I have no difficulty with the article itself. The article was well-written. And while this is admittedly subjective, I find the title itself to invite the sort of things I mentioned above, borderline to link-bait.

throwawayn00b 14y ago

>girlfriend ....aaaaand there he had it 100 better than me already. Being a sociopath gets lonely sometimes. Oh well there is always more free porn.

guard-of-terra 14y ago

If you ever played computer games you will know: Having one healer you can heal everyone but that healer; Having two healers you can heal just everyone.

roel_v 14y ago

Here's an only tangentially related question I've wondered about several times now, reading various articles about this case: his girlfriend's last name is "Stinebrickner-Kauffman", and consistently so. I know of Spanish customs where children get the last names of both parents, but these names don't sound Latino. Is it customary for (sorry if I'm making a wrong assumption there) Israeli/Jewish people to take both last names as well, or had she been married before? (again not to be stalkerish, I don't really care if she had been married - I'm just wondering if there are other cases than in Spain where it's customary to take the name of both parents).

zb 14y ago
It's not unusual for this to occasionally happen in English-speaking countries, though it is not ubiquitous in the way it is in Spain. Also note that the two names don't necessarily come from her 2 parents; it's quite possible (indeed, likely) that she inherited that name through several generations.
FaUaCaKcYaOaU 14y ago
Well this has got to be the most autistic reply in here.
- roel_v 14y ago
  Sorry if it came across that way - it surely wasn't meant as prying into these people's details. I was just wondering about how people end up with the names they have.
tokenadult 14y ago
Here's an article on surname patterns in the United States, previously submitted for HN discussion: http://www.npr.org/2012/07/19/156923573/when-hyphen-boy-meets-hyphen-girl-names-pile-up http://www.npr.org/2012/07/19/156923573/when-hyphen-boy-meet...
- roel_v 14y ago
  Oh that's interesting, missed that the first time around, thanks.

danso 14y ago

Despite the weekly articles and coverage since Aaron's death, this is by far the best of the pieces, especially in terms of detail. I think even Aaron's haters will think it's the best, as it dispels a lot of the exaggerations that have cropped up around Aaron's material accomplishments. But even in this more realistic, nuanced light, the tragedy of his suicide seems even more profound. There's no easy answers or conclusions, though this piece does the best job I've seen so far of explaining the political tensions and context leading up to Aaron's prosecution and death. Definitely a worthwhile read, even after reading thousands of other words on the subject. The OP downplays Aaron's role at Reddit considerably, to the point where it sounds like he did nothing at all except dream about social activism before taking the money and running. But even if he wasn't the full time engineer, wasn't his contribution in converting Reddit to web.py considered noteworthy toward the success/maintain ability of the site (at least at its early stage)? http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/rewritingreddit http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/rewritingreddit Edit: this was discussed in the Reddit thread five years ago though not really conclusively answered http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/1octb/reddit_cofounder_aaron_swartz_discusses_how_he/c1odpo http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/1octb/reddit_cof...

panacea 14y ago
reddit hasn't seen fit to include his avatar in the 'reddit alumni' http://www.reddit.com/about/team/ http://www.reddit.com/about/team/

xijuan 14y ago

I like all the stories about him. It is like seeing him from a different angle every time. Pieces by pieces, I start to see the whole picture. I feel I understand more of him each time. But at the same time, I feel there are more and more things I still don't know about him.

LatvjuAvs 14y ago

Maybe he did, only our reservation of what he did prevents us to recognize that.

smogzer 14y ago

Could the guy responsible for making the contents of his hd available online do it so. Use the dd command by the way, don't just copy files.

FaUaCaKcYaOaU 14y ago

Suicide is the coward's way out. What he did is unacceptable. You all love him and you appreciate what he did and you hurt because he died, I respect that, but committing suicide is the ultimate cowardice, you hurt those who stay and you go out the easy way. If you think that suicide is a solution for you please seek help urgently. WHEN YOU DECIDE TO KILL YOURSELF YOU'VE FINALLY FREED YOURSELF TO DO ANYTHING YOU EVER DREAMED OF. IF YOU WERE WILLING TO DIE, THEN YOU ARE WILLING TO GO TO AFRICA AND HELP THE POOR, GO JOIN DOCTORS SANS FRONTIERS AND GO HELP THE SICK. DON'T BE A COWARD AND DON'T KILL YOURSELF. Aaron Swartz was much more valuable alive and what he did is unacceptable, there is no justification for what he did.

corporalagumbo 14y ago

Reading this I kept shaking my head and thinking "what a sad little boy/man." Everything about his life makes me cringe: the awkward adolescent photos, his gravitation towards adult "friends," his dependence on a largely analytical basis for relationships and connections, the endless dissatisfaction and detachment, the fruitless big dreams, the inability to focus and work on one objective, the recklessness, the grueling self-analysis and self-exposition, the anger and the impotence... I think, from reading this, that Aaron was a person with something missing inside of him. To compensate, he tried to change everything around him - everything but himself. People like that have poor odds in life. When the world resists their efforts and they are forced to acknowledge the limits of their agency, their big dreams of quick change come crashing down. They can find themselves with little to retreat to in the aftermath.

stretchwithme 14y ago
I'm sure a lot of this is true, but some of it seems like you're casting him in a much more negative light than is fair. He did accomplish some things. I don't think he had something missing inside of him. I think he had some mistaken beliefs but probably would have figured those out eventually if he hadn't taken such a radical step.
etherael 14y ago
It sounds like you're disappointed in him for not succumbing to aspects of the modern world which could fairly be described as diseases. I understand this is a widespread and basically normal opinion, but I don't understand how people can hold it without being aware of how subjective and ridiculous it is. It would be like going back to the time of Galileo and Giordano Bruno and commenting how sad it was that they couldn't just make nice with the powers that be and toe the line like everyone around them, and how much more fulfilled and happy they would have been if that were the case. The world needed changing then, and it needs it now. To ignore this is to totally miss the point of this entire episode.
- corporalagumbo 14y ago
  Disappointed? Huh? What are you talking about? Aaron was unhappy his entire life. He behaved recklessly, attracted criminal prosecution, and capped it all of by killing himself. Do you find that noble? I don't. I think he failed: failed to see the world realistically, failed to direct his thoughts and energies in a constructive manner, and failed to achieve much of anything. He puffed himself up and charged into something that didn't budge, and then he lost control. That's not noble to me at all. Just sad. As for: >aspects of the modern world which could fairly be described as diseases. Can you elaborate? (And do you mean that these aspects behave similarly to pathological infections in organisms or to epidemiological dynamics among populations?) And >Galileo Bad comparison. Galileo was explicitly ordered by the Catholic Church not to "hold or defend" the Copernican system. I.e. the dominant social power of that time and place decided they didn't like the concept, and they suppressed efforts to discuss and spread it. When Galileo edged around the constraint, they clamped down even harder. It was a clear cut case of a social power deciding to restrict free speech to prevent an idea from even being thought about. In contrast, there is no dominant social power in modern times. No one is in even a remotely comparable position in 2013 to suppress ideas. You and I are free to discuss copyright liberation or whatever we want. Aaron was free to write blogs, tracts, hand out pamphlets, send letters to politicians, make websites, etc etc etc. No one suppressed him in any of those activities. It is only when he crossed the line into illegal behaviour that he was prosecuted - according to open, democratically-developed laws and prosecutorial guidelines - all subject to normal processes of democratic oversight. >The world needed changing then, and it needs it now. Dangerous language in my opinion. Nothing "needs" anything. Deciding that the world "needs" changing means you set up a very rigid condition for success. And this is what I think happened with Aaron: inevitably people who think the world needs changing run into roadblocks, which their rigidity does not prepare them for. Then, failing to make the changes they believe are necessary, they fail to meet their rigid victory condition - and because of its rigidity, they fail, in their own opinion, absolutely. Which is devastating, and in Aaron's case, seems to have pushed him past his limits. A healthier perspective is that the world might be better with some tweaks - but it will probably never be perfect, and you should accept that you might not be able to do everything you want - and so on and so on. Aaron could have done with a bit of that perspective I reckon. How about you? As far as I'm concerned, all of Aaron's convictions and all of the bickering about the technicalities of the case are red herrings here. The fact that so many people haven't stopped to think harder about all this, and have instead jumped on the instant rage bandwagon is one of, if not THE real issue, I think. It speaks to a real trend of snap-judgement reactionary groupthink, which seems to be prevalent in contemporary internet culture. The angry people yelling about democracy and shouting dissidents down are the real danger to open society.

corporalagumbo 14y ago

The comment thread, by the way, is fantastic. Entertaining seeing what a relatively non-tech crowd (with a few nuts sprinkled in for good measure) has to say about all this.

corporalagumbo 14y ago
E.g. - from user Catfitz: "You've put your finger on something I've felt a long time about life and death of Swartz and his case -- there's an authoritarian arrogance there about hacking and stealing 4 million articles to decide for other people, the JSTOR system and the universities and scholars who participate in it, how they should live -- and be forcibly "liberated" as he "expropriates from the expropriators" like a common Bolshevik. This is dressed up in so much talk of "free" and "open" that people forget that it bears all the signs of technocommunism -- everyone is to be forced to work for free and share everything in a collective farm. How will costs be met?"