Ten Years after Aaron Swartz‘s Death

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"In memory of Aaron Swartz" series full article entry

On January 11, 2013, Aaron Swartz was found dead by suicide in his Brooklyn home at the age of 26.

Aaron Swartz died in this way on the eve of the concentrated landing and explosion of mobile Internet, Internet finance, content creation platform and artificial intelligence.

In this decade, the social change driven by the mobile Internet may be more violent than any previous cultural movement, so violent that the distance between people can be completely glued or completely torn by the Internet.

This makes Aaron Swartz's more views and actions more precious, but the continuous explosion of Internet technology after 2013 makes Aaron Swartz's premature death make people sigh. Although, the distance between people and knowledge sharing in the entire Internet today has become farther and farther than Aaron Swartz hoped.

Because Aaron Swartz has been fired by Reddit's shareholders in 2006, it is not necessary to talk about its direction; but in communities like Wikipedia, editors of articles in certain language regions have also deviated slightly due to various political or ideological issues. The original intention when it was founded; since 2015, Sci-hub and Z-library have been continuously accused of "harmful content" and "endangering security" by multinational agencies. Around 2021, some communication service operators and government agencies Start to block the public domain names of these websites one after another.

I believe that after watching some short videos on how drugs are produced, or some articles on the follow-up content analysis of the Shinzo Abe shooting case, they will think that if the knowledge uploaded to the Internet is disclosed and disseminated without restriction , there will be dire consequences; a little knowledge of some fields is a very dangerous thing. Some people even stand at the height of philosophy, talking about "human beings are inherently evil", and sharing knowledge without restriction will put the world in an extremely dangerous situation.

But we can first look at the developments related to the Internet and information technology in the past decade, and how far the world has advanced by leaps and bounds with the implementation of related technologies.

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In 2013, we already had smartphones such as iPhone 5 and Galaxy S3, and 4G LTE technology was almost completely integrated with the world's largest financial centers. Some programmers tried to maintain the system or write software or Apps on mobile phones, because their Some sites are running through Amazon's EC2, and the performance of mobile phones is smooth enough to run some local editors; more and more people are starting to post various photos and videos on Instagram; carpool commuting has become popular in the United States; Will check in on Foursquare; many small and interesting ideas have become a reality through the crowdfunding function of Kickstarter; Toutiao has only been in operation for a year now. In 2013, the concept of Ethereum was proposed, and virtual currency technology began to move in a more diverse direction.

More importantly, the implementation of artificial intelligence technologies such as deep learning has been put on the agenda again due to the continuous improvement of computer hardware performance. Algorithms, data, and computing power are gradually becoming the troika that drives the world upwards.

In addition to Internet technology, the continuous evolution of imaging technology and the decentralization of professional fields have made it possible for anyone to be an "Internet celebrity". If you can operate these photography equipment, have a certain video editing ability, and add your own wonderful output of rich life or work experience, a person can earn millions just by making Internet short videos-this has also promoted the content creation platform. rise. The explosive growth of content creation platforms relies on the rapid advancement of mobile Internet performance.

In fact, a lot of practical video knowledge and video editing knowledge, as well as skills such as copywriting cannot be found in books that follow the rules. The Internet undertakes part of the work of transferring this knowledge; "Cheats" handed down by word of mouth. If there is no Internet and sufficient dissemination of such knowledge, then "Internet celebrities" may eventually become the privilege of a small number of people or organizations.

This is a time of explosive change. However, this period of explosive change is still going on today, and our subjective perception may be limited in it.

Back to the past. In 2013, many technologies and knowledge are being discovered and learned by human beings, but there is still a long way to go. At that time, people still had a lot of speculation about the future, including Aaron Swartz also had his own views and imaginations about the creation and distribution of content on the Internet in the future. Ideally, with the continuous increase of Internet content, knowledge will be disseminated more widely, niche content also has its own audience, and these niche content will not make these creators hungry because of insufficient attention If they die, they will find more channels because of the Internet and make profits through these channels.

A subtle side effect of the mass dissemination of knowledge is that people become more tolerant.

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If you are lucky enough to have seen the interview clip of Aaron Swartz — The Network Transformation , I believe you must have the same feeling as me: when Aaron Swartz describes that a large discrete content transmitted through the Internet should be transmitted in different forms When going through the world of profit, the thinking behind it must be related to knowledge and cultural diversity.

This of course has his own subjective preferences in it. Aaron Swartz said in an interview that he reads all kinds of books, mostly philosophy; he also listens to some podcasts, he mentioned * Behind the News with Doug Henwood, Counterspin andThis American Life * They are not focused on IT content, but more popular content, and of course some of them are lifehacking.

The vast majority of people who are not very familiar with the technical ecology and technical landscape often fail to realize this: when Aaron Swartz can completely describe a set of self-consistent content broadcasting ecology that can be implemented in some form in the future, such People tend to be more tolerant of everything in the world—although he completely rejected the court's judgment in 2013. After all, the blockade and cover-up of knowledge can be said to be the opposite of inclusiveness, which is completely unacceptable to Aaron Swartz.

Among them, there is a question that many people will debate, that is: whether a developer who has been exposed to the technical landscape mainly has the actual combat ability of the current development environment should be the key criterion for evaluating this person. This problem has always existed in some development teams or team recruitment, which is an indisputable fact. The difficulty of solving this problem varies from person to person, because the method is not only the introduction and guidance of tools and ecology, but also more or less involves communication, experience and empathy.

Not everyone has been exposed to the overall picture of their industry, which means that everyone has a different vision. If you want everyone to stand on the same level to see the problem, you must fully present this picture in the In front of everyone. Admiral Stanley McChrystal mentioned in his 2014 book "Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World" that what is needed to defeat this group of post-Iraq al-Qaeda forces is to maximize all fighters and generals Understand the overall battlefield situation.

Therefore, Admiral McChrystal actively participated in the communication and running-in process between the various units. The combatants of the CIA will be led to the combat units of other services and other departments for exchanges and even combat drills. Other units of JSOC such as the Rangers will also exchange with members of the SEALs, the US Air Force Special Forces and the British Army to fully learn from other forces. The combat style and experience of the troops and the situation in the area where the local troops are stationed, and after many exchanges, a more comprehensive combat capability and system have been formed.

The Iraqi battlefield in 2005 is a very good scene that can include the body and mind of every participant in it. They are good fighters, they are highly capable intelligence officers, and they have battle-tested commanders. But until they understand the overall situation on the battlefield and make changes accordingly, they can only fight on their own. Until all have enough time and energy to share information and knowledge with each other, to gain a complete picture of the battlefield and true strategic objectives, they will always be losers.

They need to communicate, need to run in, need joint operations, need to share the information they have in their hands, and need to hand over everything they know to soldiers, generals, and intelligence personnel of other troops without reservation. This is all to achieve an ultimate goal: to weaken the advantages of al-Qaeda in various regions of Iraq and stabilize the regional situation. As a result, they are able to work together wholeheartedly around a single goal.

Admiral McChrystal even mentioned that after the upgrade of communication equipment in line with this change, more frequent internal communications will be monitored by "malicious" people, just like Edward Snowden did for the US government. But he made it clear in the book: Compared with the greatly enhanced communication efficiency within JSOC, this kind of monitoring like the Prism Gate is "not worth mentioning at all." In a way, these remarks just confirm some of the above-mentioned views on "inclusiveness".

Let me make a digression: Compared with the world of war, the world of peace is more complicated, and different people have different priorities in life, so in some cases, compromises must be made. Communication, running-in, compromise, and finally reaching a consensus is a very painful thing in a peaceful world. Time, patience, and especially tolerance have become very important in this process. This is the process that the development team must go through when accepting newcomers who are not familiar with tools and ecology.

Regardless, if you limit yourself to the job itself, getting your hands on the tools and platforms and starting to code is a lot less difficult than painting the picture for your employees. If employees have enough confidence in the technical landscape they are participating in, TA will definitely devote more energy to this job - the premise is that colleagues and leaders are also experts in this industry, rather than a bunch of laymen.

I believe that developers who can participate in the recruitment of developers, even if the tools and systems used by the new team and new work are different from those they have seen before, they still have their own set of commonly used tools and systems more or less. This is like the various special forces of JSOC in the post-Iraq war period. As long as there is a suitable opportunity to work and live with other teams, and with development experience and experience, they can master new tools, platforms and ecology; moreover Importantly, TA can also share the complete technical picture of himself and his team members with everyone.

Aaron Swartz enjoys working in loose teams and is actively involved in building organizations where knowledge can be shared to the maximum extent possible, helping to create legislation that allows knowledge to be shared freely. I believe he understands very well that a person with rich knowledge may not be very rich or have great power, but he will definitely live a rich and colorful life, and he will be able to "see all mountains and small things" and see more things that he could not see before . This is a feeling of fulfillment that also includes positive subjective emotions such as epiphany, sense of accomplishment, and happiness. Acquiring knowledge is always a good thing.

This may also be after Aaron Swartz has realized that all the promotion he has done is futile, he chose to commit suicide.

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The reality after that was even sadder. Although the "Internet Anti-Piracy Act" was not implemented in the end, SOPA did not fall. So much of the literature that would have been freely available remains on the shelf; some complex regional histories are being falsified, perhaps through textbooks, perhaps through Instagram, and those that may still bring awareness to the foolishness of the people who once were. , either locked in a paywall or blocked by a LAN wall.

The world does not seem to have changed in any way compared to 2013.

Although such problems are gradually being eliminated through various Internet services and consumption platforms, they still exist. For example, some "out-of-print books" that cannot be seen in certain regions and countries may be because these books have touched the red line of certain governments, or books are too difficult for translators to translate, or books of this category, a certain Most people in the area are really not interested, but these books appeal to a small number of people in the area. They can indeed hope to purchase directly by registering certain accounts and credit cards in other countries and regions, but in fact this threshold is often more difficult than obtaining pirated books. After all, pirated books have changed from illegal printing to illegal storage now, and the threshold and path to access illegal storage are often simpler than handling credit cards in other countries. You can argue that such extreme totalitarian regimes should have disappeared from the face of the earth long ago, but the problem is that such regimes not only exist, but even affect the global economy.

Such things happen outside of pirated books as well. I saw some Americans say, amazed that the Chinese and Russians have played so many video games that they have never heard of or can't afford, and when they know that the Chinese and Russians are verified by cracking the game After the system can be played for free, some people expressed envy, while others expressed disdain. The era of rampant piracy and private servers has ruined many excellent Chinese game companies, so some Chinese players and developers who have experienced this era are still gnashing their teeth when talking about piracy today.

Later, with the strengthening of copyright awareness of Chinese companies and the drastic changes in the development path of video games, the term piracy gradually became less popular, and private servers became a new category of web games. Domestic free games have begun to be noticed by more new generations, and Tencent has become the world's number one game company. Roit Games' most popular MOBA game "League of Legends" is also a free product suitable for low-end computers. All you need to do is download the client, register an account, and then enter the game to play.

The communication ability produced by the combination of free and the Internet is terrifying, whether it is a meme, breaking news, a piece of car repair knowledge that has been seen by many people, or a video game that has been played for thousands of hours, or a book on the internet. Strange books that are regarded as standard in certain regions, some of them have even become immortal classics around the world with the help of the Internet. This communication ability has given many niche hobbies the opportunity to become popular. Niche hobbies such as kincana, parkour, camping, and game photography have all attracted more people’s attention due to the spread of the Internet. Of course, among related hobbies The technology, background, requirements for fans, etc. contained in it are gradually known to more people. In the process of dissemination of Internet content, the knowledge system required by these hobbies has also carried out countless self-replication.

Not just such knowledge. Environmental issues, human rights, geopolitics, minorities and other incidents are constantly exposed, and people's discussions on ethics and morals are more frequent than ever. In the face of such topics, whether the discussants really need it or not, it will involve many historical and political events, and this information is often blocked by some people who want to discuss these topics in depth because of copyright or paywalls. This is a bad thing for the internet and the world right now, where nationalist sentiments are growing in many areas due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the world economy going downhill. Nationalist sentiment is one of the underlying psychology of human beings losing tolerance, rejecting diversity and the process of globalization. Today, these serious and very complicated issues are also the "little spark" that causes conflicts between people on the Internet, and its manifestation is that more and more people regard emotions as opinions when discussing these issues. , take the point of view as logic. Because these people lack the most basic reading of the origin, history, academic content, historical materials and books of these issues.

What's more dangerous is that because the Internet celebrity economy is becoming an important genre in the world economic system, some institutions and organizations have begun to establish capital chains, bind some very extreme views with Internet celebrities, and distribute them to the "fans" of Internet celebrities. ", mobilize the emotions of "fans", brainwash them, and based on this, sell various products that may be accompanied by extreme emotions. The consequences of this funded, organized operation are dire.

Perhaps, it can only be said that maybe, to some extent, we can blame the underlying logic of the Internet for not completely developing in the direction of decentralization. Data centers around the world have become the core infrastructure for distributing content. Distributed computing is the exclusive power of Internet infrastructure providers. Algorithms of large companies have taken over the interest orientation of audiences. Creator platforms and creators themselves are still moving towards It is developing in the direction of centralization, and it is developing in the direction that can most "provoke" users' emotions—even in some areas where creator platforms are contending with a hundred schools of thought, an elephant is controlling here, and only one kind of content is allowed to be published. These behemoths are indeed affecting people's perception of life and the entire world.

So, ten years after Aaron Swartz's death, people who still have a glimmer of hope for the future may indeed need to act and organize more effective forces than Aaron Swartz once organized to push history in which direction it should develop.