“Be curious. Read wisely. Try new things. I think a lot of what people call intelligence just boils down to curiosity.” - Aaron Swartz
If you haven’t been avoiding any and all news outlets for the past 3 days, you’ve heard that the man best known for co-creating Reddit and inventing the pioneering RSS program has died. He also was one of the pioneers that went AGAINST the controversial SOPA and PIPA acts.
In the two days since his passing, there’s been an outpouring of grief and support for his family and friends. There’s also been anger and outrage on behalf of many who believe an overzealous American legal system is somewhat responsible.
Speculation has been pretty to-the-point since Friday: Swartz was facing some serious jail time for his JSTOR entanglement, and given his fairly pretty open and honest about his ongoing battle with depression, they’re supposing he would rather have died.
In the 48 hours since, meanwhile, there’s been some serious hostility swung in the direction of the American legal system. Many find the penalty insanely harsh. (UPDATE: As of today, the state of Massachusetts has dismissed the case against Swartz).
Anonymous have responded by hacking the official MIT website homepage. Instead of the usual anger and threats, however, the hacktivist group is making a public call for legal reform:
“Whether or not the government contributed to his suicide, the government’s prosecution of Swartz was a grotesque miscarriage of justice, a distorted and perverse shadow of the justice that Aaron died fighting for,” reads the statement. “Freeing the publicly-funded scientific literature from a publishing system that makes it inaccessible to most of those who paid for it…(is) an ideal that we should all support.”
Swartz’ family didn’t take such a forgiving tone:
“It is the product of a criminal justice system rife with intimidation and prosecutorial overreach. Decisions made by officials in the Massachusetts U.S. Attorney’s office and at MIT contributed to his death.”
Yet given the gridlock Congress is currently stuck in involving the NRA, Obama’s new cabinet lineup, Hurricane Sandy aid, and the fiscal cliff, it’s difficult to say if anything in the way of true reform would come of this tragedy anytime soon.
In the 3 days since, though, Anonymous seem to be leading the charge: following their hacking, they’ve taken the more constructive step of filling out a ‘We the People‘ petition on the official White House website, asking the government to make Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) hackings ‘downgraded’ into forms of protest, and not crimes.
However, one simultaneous push being made by certain experts on both the left and the right –casting shadow over Sandy Hook and other countless shooting incidents, not to mention more fiscal/social reform issues like Obamacare and prison over-crowding — is for a major overhaul the mental health system. Right-leaning newspapers like The Wall Street Journal have called for major changes in state/federal laws regarding patient rights; on the other end of the political spectrum, MSNBC has complained openly about the mental health restrictions and the continuing decay of mental health care under our government.
While most of these op-ed pieces were spawned based on the tragic events in Newtown, perhaps there’s also a pattern emerging. With so many pundits and experts agreeing that some sort of mental health reform is needed, with at least both sides kind of agreeing on this to at least the smallest tiniest degree, maybe we now have a bipartisan endeavor that harbors some chance of success?
It could be wishful thinking. Maybe it’s even more unlikely than the other We The People petition supported by thousands last week — namely, for the White House to build a $4 quadrillion Death Star.
The point of this isn’t to use the passing of a great man for other efforts, so much as that this doesn’t have to be just another great mind lost that we eventually forget.
In the meantime, Swartz’ family and friends have constructed a website, looking back upon his achievements and a link to a fund in his memory. It could feasibly be all we have for a while.
Young Swartz/quote photos courtesy of Nick Gray.
Jeff Nau – who has written 1264 posts on The Jace Hall Show.
Jeff Nau is a main contributor to the Jace Hall Show covering pop culture and music trends in the nerd community. He has contributed to San Diego City Beat, 944, and Ill Literature, amongst others, and spends his spare time working as an artist and photographer.

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