The Internet’s Own Boy 🖼
After watching this documentary, I felt more than a sense of appreciation for such an intelligent individual. I remember news of a “reddit co-founder’s” death spreading across the news and social media outlets and remember thinking, “Huh, I wonder who that is.” The documentary on the boy genius is so well made that by the end of the film, the viewer is left with a vague outline of what Aaron Swartz was (through what he did) and a vivid image of what kind of person he could have been (when standing in his presence). He embodied the Enlightened individual and used his powers, his intelligence, his steadfastness, and his morality for good. Swartz’ was superior to the machine through intelligence and was proof of a quality most users do not have today: the physical power over technology, man winning over machine. Being the forefront of social activism in technology, fighting for things like the modification of outmoded laws, the right to privacy, and deleting censorship, Swartz was truly an inspiring leader and trailblazer of all sorts. Aside from credibility, Swartz was a transparent individual, adamantly sticking to his moral compass in all situations. Applying existing rules and laws to the evolving contemporary society is proving to be exponentially difficult each day: with more people, there are more ideas, more money, and endless amounts of egocentric or capitalistic claims. Watching this documentary, snippets “The Gift” reading resonated with me. As Hyde mentions in his book, everything is a binary, and opposing art is capitalism. Technology, connectivity, and accessibility were all viewed as art Swartz’ eyes, with capitalism and the government tainting this art in some way. Without Swartz, no individual would have gone to such lengths to break the law in order to fix it, to make known that it needs to be changed, it was his “moral imperative.” The internet would not be as “free” and accessible today if it weren’t for one boy who dreamed of a world with no limitations and restrictions in terms of intelligence and creation.
