The Boy Who Could Change the World

Running thoughts while reading. A scattered but alive collection of Aaron Swartz’s writing: programming, politics, open access, power, and a mind that never stopped pushing. Mar-Apr 2025

Reading Window

Start: 24-03-2025
End: 08-04-2025

Why this book?

It is about Aaron Swartz. I have to see the documentary too. Let’s see.

I wanted to read his writings for a while. Earlier I did not care much about political activism or the philosophy of open source. Now I do want to read it, so let’s see where it gets me.

Running Log

24-03-2025

• This is very much a bunch of young adolescent writings lol. It is literally blog-post energy.
• There is not much coherence, but there are thoughts on various aspects of the internet, politics, scripting, Wikipedia, and more.
• His idea of Wikipedia disintegration and some random parts about scripting not working are fun to look at.
• It is a simple read. Hopefully I finish early.

27-03-2025

• This guy feels like a very young, radical version of Jaron Lanier.
• He is a programmer, technologist, and activist. He does not just think in code, but in how code affects the world. Pretty interesting.
• The sad part is that some of the issues he points to are context-dependent and pass with time. I do not care about some specific election or how specific people behaved, but the pattern is still interesting.
• It shows the timelessness of events. You cannot say, “this is the end of my life or career.” There is always a watch to switch. A different thing to think about.
• I feel like anything I have to say has already been captured in some blog somewhere. There is nothing new in idea-space to talk about. What I can talk about is abstractions, and those have already been talked about on LessWrong. Fml.
• Those roads have not yet been taken, Eli. That is the only place where salvation might lie for me.

01-04-2025

• The politics section feels like watching House of Cards. It is about power, and mainly an interesting statement of power.
• I get The Dictator’s Handbook vibes, but with more dwelling in the depths of democracy and the American system.
• I like how the book talks about power driving men mad. Good one man.

05-04-2025

What I learnt so far:

• The DDT and malaria story, including the claim that the reaction to Silent Spring caused many malaria deaths.
• Noam Chomsky’s Manufacturing Consent and Understanding Power changed Swartz’s life. It is obvious that someone like him would be drawn to Chomsky: anti-establishment, partly anarchist, and deeply skeptical of institutions.
• He liked David Foster Wallace very much.
• Political entrepreneurship, including the graduation-hats example: when people become rich enough, someone will sell exactly what they need.
• How Aaron Swartz and his team helped stop SOPA through will, organizing, and crowd pressure.
• A great piece of software-engineering writing: A Non-Apology.

07-04-2025

• I like how this guy speaks.
• He is very well read, even more than someone with an internet connection.
• Chomsky clearly influenced him. He feels like a free spirit who can think.

08-04-2025

• Finished the book. Pretty interesting overall.
• It is a very good read, but also full of disconnected thoughts from across the years.
• The main point that stays is that Swartz was well read and active in the community.
• The theory that titans of industry sent people to school so they could be tamed is interesting, though I do not think it holds up generally. Media controls people now, not school.

Final Thoughts

Aaron Swartz feels like someone with tight views and huge intellectual voracity. I feel sad that I can never understand the full depth of what he thought through. He is never going to be the kind of public intellectual I can look up to in the usual way.

He is a crazy person I would have liked to talk to in real life. But I cannot. What is left is a critical mind, internet humor, and the outline of a person who could have been. It is sad he went the way he did. Suicide is never an option, even if it means not selling your soul.

I think Snowden liked him, and Snowden technically did something similar to what Swartz did to JSTOR, except Snowden got away and Swartz did not. Snowden had the technical and political savvy to escape the death-trap of this kind of electronic-media politics.

Swartz was very well read and deeply political. Touchy about the left, the right, justice, and “the ideals.” I think the world cannot be moved by two people, and he thought it could. He had high morals and was not giving them up for anything.

I should make a list of books he recommended or read. Let’s see how well that goes. That’s it for this guy folks. He is fun, he is awesome, and he remains in the mind with the same kind of feeling.

Things To Chase

• Median voter theorem
• Guerilla Open Access Manifesto
• Noam Chomsky: Manufacturing Consent
• Noam Chomsky: Understanding Power
• David Foster Wallace

Quotes

“Lean into the pain.”

“There’s no justice in following unjust laws.”

“What is good thinking if you can’t share?”