TrendIn this week: Aaron Swartz, RIP
Isabelle Roughol
Building news organisations where people love to work｜Journalist & media executive｜Public historian
Internet activist Aaron Swartz, only 26, died. There couldn't be a sadder topic to be trending on LinkedIn this week.
The news is known by now. Swartz was found hanged in his Brooklyn apartment on Jan 11. In a short life, he had achieved more than many octogenarians can pretend to: he helped create the RSS 1.0 syndication format at age 14; he founded Infogami, which merged with the social news site Reddit; he attended Stanford, was a fellow at Harvard, launched the advocacy group Demand Progress, helped defeat the online censorship bill SOPA...
But Swartz had also for years suffered from depression and suicidal tendencies. "Depressed mood is like (sadness), only it doesn’t come for any reason and it doesn’t go for any either. Go outside and get some fresh air or cuddle with a loved one and you don’t feel any better, only more upset at being unable to feel the joy that everyone else seems to feel. Everything gets colored by the sadness. At best, you tell yourself that your thinking is irrational, that it is simply a mood disorder, that you should get on with your life. But sometimes that is worse. You feel as if streaks of pain are running through your head, you thrash your body, you search for some escape but find none. And this is one of the more moderate forms", he once wrote in an eye-opening post about depression. (Hat tip to New York Times.)
He fought another battle too, with Massachussetts prosecutors. In 2010-2011, Swartz used the MIT computer network to download 4.8 million academic papers on the online database JSTOR. The non-profit charges universities and libraries tens of thousands of dollars for access to its collection of scholarly journals. Swartz believed human knowledge should be freely accessible by the public. JSTOR chose not to pursue a case against him, but US attorneys maintained charges and a trial was set to start April 1. Swartz's family and friends believe an excessive judicial process pushed him over the edge.
To better understand what Aaron Swartz stood for, watch his keynote at "Freedom to Connect 2012" on his fight against SOPA. (Hat tip to Daniel Tunkelang)
In juxtaposition to such a young giant, the next man to trend on LinkedIn this week seems even... smaller. But I can't bring myself to write about him.
Photo credits: Sage Ross/Flickr, vvracer/Flickr, both under a Creative Commons license. Something else we can thank Aaron Swartz for.
Written in collaboration with LinkedIn senior data scientist Viet Ha-Thuc, the man with the numbers behind my words.
? Crypto ? Hemp ? Risk ?
11 年His death had little to do with his "illness."
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11 年I too had depression for years..it didnt seem to make sense as I was doing what I wanted to do.. being a mum and raising my family. I lost everything and was suicidal but a dark night of the soul and a decision not to end my life set me on a search to find out why I had created my life that way. I am ten years on now and no longer have this energy. I studied many forms of energy healing until I came across alchemy. After 3 years studying and working with energies outside normal awareness I freed my soul from this repetitive cycle. This young man came to make a difference in this world and he did it. Although it is a shame that he didnt know how to look inside himself to find the release of this awful idea. We should celebrate what he achieved and what he stood for. His efforts have shaped the future of human experience.