There are two kinds of Internet celebrities – those who get famous for something they did online (anyone from Justin Bieber to Psy to Paris Hilton and so on.)
Then there are Internet celebrities who are famous for what they’ve *continually* do online (anyone from Cory Doctorow to Lawrence Lessig to Julian Assange and so on.)
Among that latter group, there are Internet celebrities whose influence you don’t realise until they’re gone. Aaron Swartz is one such person. I’d probably read his name before (he helped create RSS, the Open Library, and was also a co-founder of Reddit after all) but he wasn’t someone who had the same name recognition to me that other “Internet rock stars” do.
But his recent suicide, mixed with an awareness of all he’d accomplished in his 26-short years on this planet, makes the loss especially poignant, moreso due to the speculation that his suicide was triggered by persecution by the US Government for his open access advocacy.
Tributes have poured in from fellow open access advocates and even more traditional writers/publishers/journalists who Swartz managed to convince that perhaps a control-focused, copyright-heavy approach wasn’t actually in the best interest of anyone, even the authors/publishers/journalists (and governments/corporations/institutions) in question. Others are looking at the larger abuse of power that led to this unfortunate end.
The irony is that his death may make him a political martyr for the causes of information freedom in the eyes of a whole generation of online denizens.
Post a Comment