The Internet's Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz

The film follows the story of programming prodigy and information activist Aaron Swartz. From Swartz's help in the development of the basic internet protocol RSS to his co-founding of Reddit, his fingerprints are all over the internet. But it was Swartz's groundbreaking work in social justice and political organizing combined with his aggressive approach to information access that ensnared him in a two-year legal nightmare. It was a battle that ended with the taking of his own life at the age of 26. Aaron's story touched a nerve with people far beyond the online communities in which he was a celebrity. This film is a personal story about what we lose when we are tone deaf about technology and its relationship to our civil liberties.

Film by Brian Knappenberger - Luminant Media
http://www.takepart.com/internets-own-boy
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/26788492/aaron-swartz-documentary-the-internets-own-boy-0
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License

Unjust laws exist;

shall we be content to obey them,

or shall we endeavor to amend them,
and obey them until we have succeeded,

or shall we transgress them at once?

– Henry David Thoreau

A cofounder of the social, news and entertainment website Reddit has been found dead.

He certainly was a prodigy, although he never kind of thought of himself like that.

He was totally unexcited

about starting businesses and making money

There's a profound sense of lost in Highland Park,

Aaron Swartz's hometown,

as loved ones say good bye to one of the Internet's brightest lights.

Freedom, open access and computer activists are mourning his loss.

"An astonishing intellect", if you talk to people who knew him.

He was killed by the government

and MIT betrayed all of its basic principles.

They wanted to make an example out of him.

Governments have insatiable desire to control.

He was potentially facing 35 years in prison
and a one million dollar fine.

Raising questions or prosecutorial zeal, and I would say even misconduct.

Have you looked into that particular matter and reached any conclusions?

Growing up, you know, I slowly had this process of realizing

that all the things around me, that people had told me

were just the natural way things were, the way things always would be

They weren't natural at all, there were things that could be changed

and there were things that more importantly were wrong and should change.

And once I realized that, there was really kind of no going back.

The Internet's Own Boy.

Welcome to story reading time.

The name of the book is "Paddington at the fair"

Well, he was born in Highland Park and grew up here.

Aaron came from a family of three brothers, all extraordinarily bright.

Oh, the box is tipping over...

So we were all, you know, not the best behaved children

You know, three boys running around all the time, causing trouble

Hey, no, no no!

-Aaron!
-What?

But I've come to the realization Aaron learned how to learn at a very young age

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight...

- Knock, knock!
- Who's there?

- Aaron
- Aaron who?

- Aaron Funnyman.

He knew what he wanted, and he always wanted to do it.

He always accomplished what he wanted.

His curiosity was endless.

Here's a little picture of (inaudible)

And each planet has a symbol. Mercury symbol, Venus symbol, Earth symbol, Mars symbol...

One day he said to Susan: what's this free family entertainment downtown Highland Park?

He was three at the time.

And she said: what are you talking about?

He said: Look, it says here on the refrigerator, "Free family entertainment downtown Highland Park".

She was floored and astonished that he could read.

It's called "My family Seder".

That Seder night is different from all other nights.

I remember once, we were at the University of Chicago Library.

I pulled a book off the shelf, that was from like 1900.

And showed him: you know, this is an extraordinary place.

We all were curious children, but Aaron really liked learning and really liked teaching.

And what we're going to do is learn is ABC backwards.

Z, Y, X, W, V, U, T...

I remember he came home from his first Algebra class

He was like: "Noah, let me teach you Algebra!"

I'm like: what is Algebra?

And he was always like that.

Now it's press click button, there! Now it's got that!

Now it's in pink!

When he was about two or three years old, and Bob introduced him to computers,

then he just took off, like crazy on them.

(Inintelligible)

We all had computers, but Aaron really took to them, really took to the Internet.

- Working at the computer?
- Naah..

- How c... mommy, why is nothing working?

He started programming from a really young age.

I remember the first program that I wrote with him was in Basic, and it was a Star Wars trivia game.

He sat down with me in the basement, where the computer was,

for hours, programming this game.

The problem that I kept having with him is that there was nothing that I wanted done

And to him, there was always something to do, always something that programming could solve.

The way Aaron always saw it, is that programming is magic.

You can accomplish these things that normal humans can't.

Then we made an ATM, using like a MacIntosh and like a cardboard box.

One year for Halloween, I didn't know what I wanted to be,

and he thought it would be really cool if I dressed up like his new favorite computer,

which at the time was the original iMac.

I mean, he hated dressing up for Halloween but he loved convincing other people

to dress up in these things that he wanted to see.

Host Aaron, stop! Guys, come on, look at the camera!

He made this website called The Info, where people could just fill in the information

I'm sure someone out there knows everything about gold, gold leafing

Why they don't write about that on this website? And then other people can come at a later point

and read that information, and edit the information if they thought it was bad.

Not too dissimilar from Wikipedia, right?

And this was before Wikipedia begun, and this is developed by a 12 year old,

in his room, by himself, running on this tiny server, using ancient technology.

One of the teachers response was, like: "This is a terrible idea, you cant' just let anyone author the encyclopedia.

The whole reason we have scholars is to write these books for us. How did you have such a terrible idea?"

Me and my other brother will go, like: "Oh, you know, Wikipedia is cool, but we had that in our house, like, five years ago".