#6 The Internet’s Own Boy

The “Internet’s Own Boy”, Aaron Swartz was far more than just an immensely talented programmer. From the development of the basic internet protocol RSS to co-founding Reddit, his fingerprints are all over the internet. There were a lot of significant moments in the documentary that shows us how fascinating and exceptional Swartz was. One of his quotes that caught my eyes was:

‘If you had magical powers, would you use it for doing good in the world or making piles of money’–Aaron.

Swartz was always full of ideas. Through his talents, he could have had billions if he wanted but instead, he used it towards social justice, to make a difference in this world, something most of us could not do.

“Information is power”reads the first sentence of Guerilla Open Manifesto written by Aron Swartz. “…and just like all powers, there are people who want to keep it for themselves.

Swartz believed that knowledge is power and all knowledge must be free and accessible to every single person in this world irrespective of who they are or where they from. All Aaron wanted to do for the world was to bring about public access to the public domain but in return, it brought him so much trouble which ended up in his suicide. Now the US government can argue that they were simply doing their job by investigating fraud. Like Swartz says everything in this world is blinded by grief and power including our right to knowledge.