Aaron Swartz, whom we know as the founder of Reddit, was actually much more than that. This young genius, who managed to fit computer programming, entrepreneurship, activism, politics and writing in his short 26-year life, had a life full of success, even though it ended sadly.
Aaron Hillel Swartz was born on November 8, 1986 in Highland Park, Chicago. His parents are Susan and Robert Swartz. Born into a Jewish family, Swartz has two brothers, Noah and Benjamin. His father is an entrepreneur like himself and is the founder of Chicago-based software company Mark Williams.
He was an American computer programmer and entrepreneur who was one of the developers of groundbreaking projects such as the web framework py and the social networking site Reddit. He was also the co-founder of Not A Bug, which was founded in 2005.
The talented Swartz was also a famous writer and activist. He has focused most of his work on social awareness and digital activism (freedom of information/decensorship). So much so that this intense passion for the free access of information prepared his end.
Swartz, who was arrested in 2011, was accused of entering the JSTOR (academic journal e-archive) database via his MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) guest user account and downloading the academic articles and journals published therein to his computer and making them public. Information piracy, illegal file downloading, electronic fraud and internet abuse etc. A total of 13 lawsuits were filed against him for serious crimes, ultimately sentenced to $1 million in fines and 50 years in prison. Swartz and his lawyers, who also rejected the reconciliation offer submitted by the government, appealed, but their objections were rejected. Swartz was found dead in his Brooklyn apartment two days after the verdict.
A defender of an open, free and uncontrolled internet, Swartz has become one of the most influential names in making the internet what it is today with this mission it has undertaken. Hence, it is known as the "son of the internet".
Now let's take a closer look at Swartz's successful and inspiring life, starting from his childhood years.
Childhood Years
Swartz was a special kid. He had demonstrated at an early age that he had an above-normal level of intelligence and ability to learn. He learned to read by himself when he was only 3 years old. He spent most of his time learning about computers, programming, the internet, and internet culture.
He attended a small private school near Chicago until the 9th grade. The following year, he left school and attended many computer courses.
Swartz was only 13 years old when he won the ArsDigita Award thanks to the website “The Info Network” which works in the same way as Wikipedia. This award was given to young people who were able to establish "useful, educational and collaborative" websites.
Career Life
After Swartz was accepted to Stanford University, he received a job offer from Y Combinator. He was asked to work for an initiative called “Infogami”, which was used to build content-rich, visually interesting websites and design a structured Wikipedia-type data system. Swartz was with Simon Carstensen, co-founder of Infogami, during the summer of 2005.
During this time, he started blogging actively.
Swartz dropped out of school, deciding not to return to Stanford. He would continue his studies at Infogami. In the process, he created a framework called web.py. Because he was not satisfied with any of the Python-based framework systems. (*Framework is the infrastructure that forms the skeleton of the software used for users to code more healthily and faster).
In November 2005, Infogami and Reddit joined forces as both companies were going through hard times. Founded in the same year, Not a Bug became a brokerage firm that supports both companies. At the end of this merger, which started on an equal basis, where both companies struggled with problems, Reddit was the profitable side.
Although Infogami's shoes were thrown into the air with the founding of Not a Bug, after the acquisition of Not a Bug and thus Reddit by Wired Magazine, Infogami's software was used as the basis for the "Open Library Internet Archive Project".
Swartz, who had to move to SanFrancisco due to the sale of Reddit, started working at Wired's headquarters. He resigned soon after realizing that office life was not for him at all.
Digital Activism
His passion for free access to information drove Swartz to fight for it. Added to this, his irresistible drive to make the world a better place, he decided not to settle for technology and enter politics.
Aaron Swartz founded Watchdog.net in 2008. The site was created to collect data about politicians. In particular, the focus was on the sources of funds belonging to politicians.
Swartz helped found “demandprogress.org” in 2010. This was a political group that aimed to inform people about civil rights and freedoms, government reforms and many other topics. The group was encouraging all protesters online to reach out to public officials and support repression tactics.
Swartz also managed to make a big splash with the “SOPA” (Stop Online Piracy) campaign, of which he was one of the pioneers. SOPA was a reaction to the internet law, which became the focus of discussions at that time.
Another attempt by Swartz was to infiltrate the US database system called PACER, which stores federal court records. These documents could be accessed for a fee, and this fee, of course, bothered Aaron. Swartz, who seized electronic court records in 2008, made 2.7 million federal court documents available to the public free of charge. Although the FBI launched an investigation into this matter, all charges were dropped when it was realized that the documents were already publicly available.
Arrest and Trial Process
Another event that brought Swartz to court doors was that in 2011, MIT infiltrated JSTOR, where digital articles are stored and sold for a fee, over the computer network, downloading a considerable amount of academic articles and making them available for free. Swartz accessed this network from MIT's guest account, and when his identity was discovered through a camera placed in the room, his authorization to download files was terminated.
Swartz was arrested on the night of January 6, 2011. On November 17, 2011, he was sued in federal court on charges of electronic fraud, information theft, illegal obtaining of information from a government-protected computer, and reckless damage to the computer in question. On September 12, 2012, nine more charges were added to Swartz's indictment, meaning he faced 50 years in prison and a $1 million fine. If he confessed to committing these 13 crimes, he would be sentenced to six months in a low-security prison. Swartz refused this offer. The federal court, on the other hand, was criticized for the "extremism" in its practices.
Swartz has become an "online icon" after his death. The trial process, on the other hand, is referred to as an overzealous and opaque act of prosecution. His life has been the subject of documentaries/films.