
Aaron Swartz’s Theory on How to Save the World - mirandak4
https://backchannel.com/aaron-swartzs-theory-on-how-to-save-the-world-b3401bf79d99#.1s4ngfa0s
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jstewartmobile
By wishing to assemble

" _groups of people supremely competent in certain relevant disciplines —
investigators, activists, lawyers, lobbyists, policy experts, political
strategists, journalists, and publicists — who could combine their efforts and
advocate effectively for any issue, big or small_ ",

he was showing his desire for the same kind of power Bertrand Russell was
discussing in the later quote:

" _Since power over human beings is shown in making them do what they would
rather not do, the man who is actuated by love of power is more apt to inflict
pain than to permit pleasure._ "

This is just an early stage of common elite pathology. Aaron was a good kid.
They all start out as good kids.

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naasking
Notice Aaron said "advocate for", and you quoted Russell saying "making them".
I think that's a meaningful difference, don't you?

~~~
jstewartmobile
With "democracies" and mass-media, it's the same thing.

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nanna
If this article had linked to Aaron's original piece instead of summarising
its argument and interspersing it with allusions to his life, I wonder if the
HN discussion would have taken such an ad hominem turn.

Take two:
[http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/save1](http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/save1)

Personally I find the prospect of a system by which people with all different
specialisms from around the world could coordinate their efforts as abstract
groups highly enticing. One of the big problems of the left, at least where I
am, is a feeling of not knowing how or where to get involved with things. I
think this speaks to that problem. Discuss.

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rick_perez
Free access to everything is great, but you can't also complain that you have
no jobs left when those companies can't pay people to actually do the research
anymore.

Most of the information that Aaron was 'freeing' cost lots of money in
research and development.

A true hero would create an organization that spent their own money on
research and development and then give out the results for free. This takes
real sacrifice.

Most of the people that propose that everything needs to be free are talking
about the hard work of other people and freeing it against their will.

This is not my definition of a hero or even someone we should admire.

~~~
scarmig
I'm not wholly a fan of Aaron's approach here, but this critique seems a bit
off-base.

JSTOR wasn't the organization doing the research and development. Various
universities and academics, all tax-advantaged and often government-funded,
were doing that research. And JSTOR charges them, not giving them a platform
for free.

JSTOR itself does add value--it's a platform to publish, and presumably offers
editing etc. But Aaron wasn't freeing any of the code that runs JSTOR, just
the content it held. Compare it to the free ArXiv, which plays a similar role
to JSTOR.

~~~
douche
Does JSTOR add value, though? I used it a lot in college, but it's searching
capabilities were terrible, and most of the articles were incredibly poorly
scanned, almost unreadable.

~~~
scarmig
Yes. Just because nowadays you can imagine much better implementations doesn't
change how much a step forward it was in the 90s. There's a reason Aaron was
able to download huge amounts of human knowledge in a couple hours. It'd have
been pretty much impossible for him to do what he did before some organization
like JSTOR.

