"Since his death, his family and closest friends have tried to hone his story into a message, in order to direct the public sadness and anger aroused by his suicide to political purposes. They have done this because it is what he would have wanted, and because it is a way to extract some good from the event. They tell people that the experience of being prosecuted is annihilatingly brutal, and that prosecutors can pursue with terrible weapons defendants who have caused little harm. One of the corollaries of this message is that Swartz did not kill himself; he was murdered by the government. But this claim is for public consumption, and the people closest to him do not really believe it. They believe that he would not have killed himself without the prosecutors, but they feel that there is something missing from this account—some further fact, a key, that will make sense of what he did.
Despite his public presence, he was small and frail and shy and often sick, and people wanted to protect him. He was loved intensely, as a child is loved."
The most I feel for Swartz is pity. Everything about this fiasco makes me want to puke.
"Aaron was too good for this world" I'm sick of the politics of spoiled teenagers.
"I remember a creature who seemed at first almost to be made up of pure data, disembodied—a millionaire, I had to have guessed, given his early success building a company sold to Condé Nast, but one who seemed to live on other people’s couches. (Am I misremembering that someone told me he crashed in his apartment for a while, curling up to sleep under a sink?)
Only slowly, it seems, did he come to learn that he possessed a body."
We live our lives in "meatspace". The futurist dream of disembodied reason is an autistic fantasy. Feeding that fantasy fed his narcissism, and hastened his death.
Data wants to be free. And I'm paying what, 5 bucks a month? to call bullshit on your hagiography. A library card from the NY Public Library is a wonderful thing. I get access to JSTOR, and so much more, even from home!
Really thoughtful and important piece Ryan!
He was a narcissist, and his suicide was hastened by his enablers. His fans are oblivious.
Read this and learn something. Don't worry it's safe; it's the New Yorker.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/03/11/requiem-for-a-dream
"Since his death, his family and closest friends have tried to hone his story into a message, in order to direct the public sadness and anger aroused by his suicide to political purposes. They have done this because it is what he would have wanted, and because it is a way to extract some good from the event. They tell people that the experience of being prosecuted is annihilatingly brutal, and that prosecutors can pursue with terrible weapons defendants who have caused little harm. One of the corollaries of this message is that Swartz did not kill himself; he was murdered by the government. But this claim is for public consumption, and the people closest to him do not really believe it. They believe that he would not have killed himself without the prosecutors, but they feel that there is something missing from this account—some further fact, a key, that will make sense of what he did.
Despite his public presence, he was small and frail and shy and often sick, and people wanted to protect him. He was loved intensely, as a child is loved."
The most I feel for Swartz is pity. Everything about this fiasco makes me want to puke.
"Aaron was too good for this world" I'm sick of the politics of spoiled teenagers.
I'm going to add something else. Rick Perlstein
https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/remembering-aaron-swartz/#
"I remember a creature who seemed at first almost to be made up of pure data, disembodied—a millionaire, I had to have guessed, given his early success building a company sold to Condé Nast, but one who seemed to live on other people’s couches. (Am I misremembering that someone told me he crashed in his apartment for a while, curling up to sleep under a sink?)
Only slowly, it seems, did he come to learn that he possessed a body."
We live our lives in "meatspace". The futurist dream of disembodied reason is an autistic fantasy. Feeding that fantasy fed his narcissism, and hastened his death.
Data wants to be free. And I'm paying what, 5 bucks a month? to call bullshit on your hagiography. A library card from the NY Public Library is a wonderful thing. I get access to JSTOR, and so much more, even from home!
And I'll add one more, on another subject, https://theintercept.com/2022/11/16/september-11-victims-compensation-bill
Because as always with Americans, "A short history lesson is in order"
https://foreignpolicy.com/2009/10/29/lesson-unlearned/
Ryan that was lovely. Thank you.