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Few have shaped th e Internet like Aaron Swartz. A programmer and Internet freedom advocate, Swartz’s activism challenged th e notion that information should be owned. An open web, h e argued, is key to th e betterment of h umanity.
His life ended abruptly, at the age of 26. Many hail him as a hero. fighting through his demons, swartz pioneered technology dedicated to free and open access to information. He helped inspire an ongoing national movement against online censorship.
ad by himself to re Swartz taught elf to ’d taught hims age 3. At 13, he s o nlin e Hi ebsites. w d an ps ap d buil twork, ca lled In fo Ne en cyclopedia, to MIT, nt an d a trip wo n him a gra ho w ere th e people w et m he re he w Intern et. building th e
Soon after, he built RSS, the backbone of online news distribu tion. At 15, he was al ready developing an ethos: that all know ledge should be acce ssible to everyone . b His first jo r fo ng di was co ns, an mo m Co Creative u nity o nlin e com m en couraging n of distributio works. free creative A few years la ter he co-fou nded Reddit, a new s comm enting site that grew to attract millions of users. philosophical an d coding challe nges pressured th e partners, but Big money an d bi g offers soon follow ed.
The sale made him a millionaire. He rekindled his passio n w ith brewster ka hl e’ s intern et archives, w hi ch sought to freely offer digita l versio ns o f books.
Swartz moved to SF to work on Reddit for Conde Nast. he wrote: "I was miserable. I couldn’t stand San Francisco. i couldn’t stand office life ... I thought of suicide. I ran from the police. And when I got back on Monday morning, I was asked to resign."
12 SAN FRANCISCO BAY GUARDIAN
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