Centuries ago one man set out to change the world, he faced everyone's wrath but pioneered how religion came to be shaped .
Martin Luther, the German scholarly priest wrote,
"Every man must do two things alone; he must do his own believing and his own dying."
Fast forward to 2013. The world is still much the same.
Whenever a voice tries to stand up for a cause, for openess, to usher-in a cultural change, they melt into the annals of time sooner or later. What's left is a legacy and a hoard of ignited minds, touched by the cause that was being pioneered.
January 11, 2013 was indeed a black letter day for the world. Aaron Swartz is no more!
"Aaron Swartz, a cofounder of Reddit, coinventor of RSS, and high-profile activist for open data, has committed suicide...He was 26."
That's how the the news sites captured the essence of his death. Well we won't really speak of how it ended for him. The wonder guy has a gamut of commendable achievements to his name that deserves honor and respect. We'll just briefly run through it before coming to the tougher questions that have arisen following his untimely death.
No doubt, Aaron was a child prodigy. Son of a software company owner in Chicago, computers was a known game to him. At 13, when most teens are juggling with hormones, this geek-with-a-conscience was striding ahead for "useful, educational and collaborative" Internet usage.
Like most genius minds of our times who believe in practise rather than theory, Aaron dropped out of Standford to begin his startup Infogami, that later merged with Reddit, the popular social media news site. For most of us bloggers,writers and publishers, his Really Simple Syndication or RSS as we know it, revolutionized the web's entire networking architecture.
By his 20's, Aaron's business acumen in the tech world balanced out with his political consciousness. Part of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee and Demand Progress, bodies that have championed the cause of internet as a free and open source, Aaron was instrumental in the battle against the SOPA(Stop Online Piracy Act).
Here comes the real paradox now.
According to Chris Hayes, anchor at MSNBC and Editor of The Nation, who aptly summed up the persona of his Harvard co-fellow "He was the kind of 21st century nerd renaissance man".
Shedding light on the other side of this brilliant mind, Hayes shared Swartz's 2007 post "Sick", highlighting his depression. Well as they say 'Mind over Matter', all achievers go through personal battles with lots of unknown troughs and crests. What the world sees is a masked success of a man on the pinnacle of glory doing great things for the larger good; the hard part just gets nicely covered up.
A man who has been the voice of Internet's freedom was in the midst of a federal investigation since July 2011 for allegedly downloading numerous academic articles from JSTOR via MIT's network, that he was going to make available freely to users. His crusade for open data sources include laudable efforts like Internet Archive, Creative Commons, Wikipedia and the collection of legal documents, Recap.
However, the prosecution indicted him on 13 counts of felony under the 1986 Computer Fraud and Abuse Act while JSTOR declined to press charges.
Like many of the U.S laws that are open-ended, giving the government a vast leverage to prosecute people it wants to corner, SOPA and the 1986 Act do not do justice to people who want to make the Web a better place. Their means may not be on the right side of the political and legal fence, but the ends are indeed honorable, as was Swartz's.
The government time and again shows its concern for the enormity of the cyber crimes that have taken a monster's form lately, but indeed by snubbing such young, thoughtful minds, the government is only loosing out on its support base for bringing in change.
While the case is being investigated, the hactivist group Anonymous hacked into MIT's website, showing their solidarity for Aaron.
They send out a message following his suicide, that calls it a "grotesque miscarriage of justice, a distorted and perverse shadow of the justice that Aaron died fighting for- freeing the publicly funded scientific literature from a publishing system that makes inaccessible to most of those who paid for it."
Well how much this legal proceeding had a bearing on his decision to end his life now remains a matter of conjecture but Swartz's end has come in a way no one imagined.
In one of his last posts on his blog, Raw Thought he had reviewed the latest Batman flick. But what's baffling is his own words spelling his subtle plan of death.
"Thus Master Wayne is left without solutions. Out of options, it's no wonder the series ends with his staged suicide."
We ask our readers to spare a moment's thought to this young man who's no more.You can also share this post to spread some good word around and be a part of Aaron's cause. Thank you all for stopping by to read this. Leave us your opinions and thoughts below.
Do follow us on Twitter and our Facebook Page for more.
Martin Luther, the German scholarly priest wrote,
"Every man must do two things alone; he must do his own believing and his own dying."
Fast forward to 2013. The world is still much the same.
Whenever a voice tries to stand up for a cause, for openess, to usher-in a cultural change, they melt into the annals of time sooner or later. What's left is a legacy and a hoard of ignited minds, touched by the cause that was being pioneered.
January 11, 2013 was indeed a black letter day for the world. Aaron Swartz is no more!
"Aaron Swartz, a cofounder of Reddit, coinventor of RSS, and high-profile activist for open data, has committed suicide...He was 26."
That's how the the news sites captured the essence of his death. Well we won't really speak of how it ended for him. The wonder guy has a gamut of commendable achievements to his name that deserves honor and respect. We'll just briefly run through it before coming to the tougher questions that have arisen following his untimely death.
No doubt, Aaron was a child prodigy. Son of a software company owner in Chicago, computers was a known game to him. At 13, when most teens are juggling with hormones, this geek-with-a-conscience was striding ahead for "useful, educational and collaborative" Internet usage.
Like most genius minds of our times who believe in practise rather than theory, Aaron dropped out of Standford to begin his startup Infogami, that later merged with Reddit, the popular social media news site. For most of us bloggers,writers and publishers, his Really Simple Syndication or RSS as we know it, revolutionized the web's entire networking architecture.
By his 20's, Aaron's business acumen in the tech world balanced out with his political consciousness. Part of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee and Demand Progress, bodies that have championed the cause of internet as a free and open source, Aaron was instrumental in the battle against the SOPA(Stop Online Piracy Act).
Here comes the real paradox now.
According to Chris Hayes, anchor at MSNBC and Editor of The Nation, who aptly summed up the persona of his Harvard co-fellow "He was the kind of 21st century nerd renaissance man".
Shedding light on the other side of this brilliant mind, Hayes shared Swartz's 2007 post "Sick", highlighting his depression. Well as they say 'Mind over Matter', all achievers go through personal battles with lots of unknown troughs and crests. What the world sees is a masked success of a man on the pinnacle of glory doing great things for the larger good; the hard part just gets nicely covered up.
A man who has been the voice of Internet's freedom was in the midst of a federal investigation since July 2011 for allegedly downloading numerous academic articles from JSTOR via MIT's network, that he was going to make available freely to users. His crusade for open data sources include laudable efforts like Internet Archive, Creative Commons, Wikipedia and the collection of legal documents, Recap.
However, the prosecution indicted him on 13 counts of felony under the 1986 Computer Fraud and Abuse Act while JSTOR declined to press charges.
Like many of the U.S laws that are open-ended, giving the government a vast leverage to prosecute people it wants to corner, SOPA and the 1986 Act do not do justice to people who want to make the Web a better place. Their means may not be on the right side of the political and legal fence, but the ends are indeed honorable, as was Swartz's.
The government time and again shows its concern for the enormity of the cyber crimes that have taken a monster's form lately, but indeed by snubbing such young, thoughtful minds, the government is only loosing out on its support base for bringing in change.
While the case is being investigated, the hactivist group Anonymous hacked into MIT's website, showing their solidarity for Aaron.
They send out a message following his suicide, that calls it a "grotesque miscarriage of justice, a distorted and perverse shadow of the justice that Aaron died fighting for- freeing the publicly funded scientific literature from a publishing system that makes inaccessible to most of those who paid for it."
In one of his last posts on his blog, Raw Thought he had reviewed the latest Batman flick. But what's baffling is his own words spelling his subtle plan of death.
"Thus Master Wayne is left without solutions. Out of options, it's no wonder the series ends with his staged suicide."
We ask our readers to spare a moment's thought to this young man who's no more.You can also share this post to spread some good word around and be a part of Aaron's cause. Thank you all for stopping by to read this. Leave us your opinions and thoughts below.
Do follow us on Twitter and our Facebook Page for more.
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