Speaker 1: As media. Hey everybody, Robert here, it's the Christmas two parter,
Speaker 1: and every year we try to use our holiday episodes
Speaker 1: to do something good. This year, we're asking you to
Speaker 1: support the mutual aid project that James Stout over at
Speaker 1: It Could Happen Here, has been a part of for
Speaker 1: nearly six months in a remote part of the US
Speaker 1: Mexico border near Yacoomba, California. While you're hopefully warm and dry,
Speaker 1: the border patrol is detaining thousands of migrants, including children
Speaker 1: and the elderly, in the desert without food, water, or
Speaker 1: shelter when overnight temperatures drop below freezing. Volunteers provide hot meals,
Speaker 1: blankets and toys for children. They build shelters even though
Speaker 1: the Border Patrol destroys them, and keep rebuilding them so
Speaker 1: that people have a place to sleep out in the
Speaker 1: freezing wind. Everyone there, including James, has spent a lot
Speaker 1: of their own money supporting this effort, and you can
Speaker 1: hear more about the efforts of volunteers over on It
Speaker 1: Could Happen Here, But your support would mean the world
Speaker 1: to James and the other people trying to help migrants
Speaker 1: over at the border. Of course, those migrants themselves. You
Speaker 1: can donate to this effort at GoFundMe. If you just
Speaker 1: type Yakumba Jacumba Migrant Camps go fund me, Yakumba Migrant
Speaker 1: Camps go fund me, you'll get it. Or you can
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Speaker 1: what a happy Yule Tie Mary Xmas to all of
Speaker 1: you listeners out there in radio land. It's not radio land.
Speaker 1: Radio is a dead medium. It's a podcast Behind the
Speaker 1: Bastards where normally we talk about the very worst people
Speaker 1: in all of history, but once a year, one glorious
Speaker 1: day or week out of the year, instead of talking
Speaker 1: about the worst people in all of history, we talk
Speaker 1: about some of the best people in all of history.
Speaker 1: And today, as our guest on this This Yule Tide episode,
Speaker 1: our only returning Christmas episode, guest Margaret Killjoy, who talks
Speaker 1: about cool people who did cool stuff for a living
Speaker 1: in a podcast with that name.
Speaker 2: Hey, you only cover Santa Claus, right, Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: We're we're getting into the We're getting into the big
Speaker 1: Man himself. Okay, now, Magpie, how do you feel about Christmas?
Speaker 1: You Christmas person.
Speaker 2: I am. Now this is a recent transition. I decided
Speaker 2: that it makes sense that everyone wants together to celebrate
Speaker 2: the darkest time of the year. Yeah, and that whatever
Speaker 2: holiday people attached to it, as long as the core
Speaker 2: of it is get together with people that you care
Speaker 2: about as the dark set, the dark is here and
Speaker 2: the cold is coming. You know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, I think that's a I tend to be
Speaker 1: more or less in agreement. I enjoy celebrating the holiday
Speaker 1: that has nothing to do with the guy we're talking
Speaker 1: about today, but it is. It is. Yeah, Santa Claus
Speaker 1: Are we've all gone through in the period from the
Speaker 1: early two thousands to today, this really interesting moment, especially
Speaker 1: those of us. This is kind of less of a
Speaker 1: case for people who have been radicals that entire time,
Speaker 1: but those of us who started from a more centrist, moderate,
Speaker 1: you know, liberal kind of background, this period of like, wow,
Speaker 1: you know, the internet is going to be this incredible
Speaker 1: tool for democracy and spreading knowledge. The tech industry they're
Speaker 1: they're like this progressive force in a lot of ways
Speaker 1: in society. There's a bunch of things that are going
Speaker 1: to be made better by connecting people all over the
Speaker 1: world to oh, not only does all this technology not
Speaker 1: work the way that we thought it, and not only
Speaker 1: is it a lot more toxic, does they have more
Speaker 1: negative consequences for people's mental health, for the health of societies,
Speaker 1: But it increases the arsenal of authoritarians. And most of
Speaker 1: the people who are running the tech industry now want
Speaker 1: that right, are fundamentally on the side of authoritarians. There's
Speaker 1: this kind of movement. The New York Times just did
Speaker 1: an article on it, because that kind of the mainstream
Speaker 1: is starting to be aware of some to an extent
Speaker 1: of which it kind of came out of some of
Speaker 1: the effective altruism stuff. That's that's the effective accelerationists, right
Speaker 1: e ff slash acc is kind of how toll be
Speaker 1: written a lot in the ideas like we need to
Speaker 1: accelerate without thinking of the consequences, you know, AI effective AI,
Speaker 1: you know, and push it in every aspect of society,
Speaker 1: and it doesn't matter who it hurts, it doesn't matter
Speaker 1: what the consequences are, because fundamentally this is what human
Speaker 1: beings need. And these people are also getting into eugenics.
Speaker 1: A lot of these are the folks around Elon Musk.
Speaker 1: It's deeply reactionary in many ways, but it came out
Speaker 1: of and a lot of some of the people who
Speaker 1: are involved in it are folks who came out of
Speaker 1: in the early two thousands, the late nineties. You would
Speaker 1: have thought a lot differently of them, right, You would
Speaker 1: have thought that these people were, if not on the
Speaker 1: side of angels, then broadly speaking, part of a positive
Speaker 1: trend in our culture. And today. The hero we're talking
Speaker 1: about is a guy who's a personal hero of mine.
Speaker 1: He was a dude who was to an extent on
Speaker 1: this side. But yeah, yeah, he was a dude who
Speaker 1: was to an extent on you know, we don't know
Speaker 1: because because of when he died, fundamentally where he would
Speaker 1: have ended up now, I don't think he would be
Speaker 1: in league with any of those guys. He's a guy
Speaker 1: a fundamentally view as a hero. And his name was
Speaker 1: Aaron Schwartz.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm so excited.
Speaker 1: Yeah spelled Swartz. Aaron Hillel Schwartz was born on November eighth,
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty six, in Highland Parks, Chicago. He was the
Speaker 1: eldest of three brothers and in general enjoyed about his
Speaker 1: privileged not bringing as you can have and still do
Speaker 1: something useful with your life, right, He's not born like
Speaker 1: into crazy money, because those people don't tend to do much.
Speaker 2: Right. There's not an emerald mine in the picture.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's not an emerald miner. But his dad like
Speaker 1: founds a software firm. I don't think they're like hundreds
Speaker 1: of millions of job but I'm sure they have a
Speaker 1: million or more, you know, in assets. You know, most
Speaker 1: of the time that that he's around, they're doing very well. Right,
Speaker 1: And because his dad's the founder of a software firm,
Speaker 1: his dad's a huge nerd, clearly a very smart guy.
Speaker 1: And so from a very early age there are computers
Speaker 1: in the Schwartz house and eventually Aaron and all of
Speaker 1: his brothers he has two younger brothers, will have computers
Speaker 1: as kids in the early I mean in the late eighties,
Speaker 1: early nineties.
Speaker 2: That's very rare, right, I grew up My dad was
Speaker 2: a very early adopter.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was.
Speaker 2: So we had computers in the eighties, and like they were,
Speaker 2: they cost like all of my dad's money, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, I was born late enough in the eighties.
Speaker 1: We certainly if we had a computer in the late ages,
Speaker 1: I don't think we did, but in the early nineties
Speaker 1: we had like we had one of the ones that
Speaker 1: like was pre floppy discs, whatever those giant ones were,
Speaker 1: and like, you know, all it has you just get
Speaker 1: green text on a little screen. Like we had one
Speaker 1: of those for a while.
Speaker 2: I would say it's probably pre hard to sorry, never mind,
Speaker 2: I don't need to my Yeah, we had all the
Speaker 2: Like my dad referred to it as a compact luggable.
Speaker 2: It's the size of a briefcase and it has a
Speaker 2: little green screen.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: It does have a hard drive. It has that. It
Speaker 2: has an A in a B drive, but not a
Speaker 2: C drive, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, ancient technology. Yeah, like not only does your phone
Speaker 1: have more computing power than I don't know may have
Speaker 1: existed in the country at that point. I don't fully
Speaker 1: know the answer to that, but like like fucking your
Speaker 1: refrigerators have more power than.
Speaker 2: Those machines did, right, Yeah, but I learned Q basic
Speaker 2: on it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So Aaron, by the time he's like three's he's
Speaker 1: using a computer, you know. And and by the time
Speaker 1: he's three or four, you know, he's he's starting to
Speaker 1: like understand how to actually like make stuff on it,
Speaker 1: Like from a very young age six or seven, when
Speaker 1: their home is wired for internet access. Again, you're talking
Speaker 1: like ninety two. They're among the very first people to
Speaker 1: have home internet access. That is extremely uncommon in the
Speaker 1: early nineties. If you followed our stories of tech billionaires
Speaker 1: guys like Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos, or you've done
Speaker 1: your own reading on Steve Jobs. We haven't covered yet.
Speaker 1: We will one of these days. I definitely do consider
Speaker 1: him a bastard, although I have kind of more admiration
Speaker 1: for him as a in terms of just his capabilities
Speaker 1: than those other guys. He is a terrible person, don't
Speaker 1: get me wrong, right, but.
Speaker 2: In a world of mosques, he stands out like he
Speaker 2: did some stuff, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah. If you are familiar with those guys, you'll recognize
Speaker 1: that Aaron has a pretty similar upbringing. They all do
Speaker 1: come from that kind of background. They're kind of upper
Speaker 1: middle class, but they're not super rich, right, But they
Speaker 1: are a lot have a lot more money than most people.
Speaker 1: They have parents who, if their parents are not tech
Speaker 1: nerds themselves, understand the value of computers and get their
Speaker 1: kids access to those at a very early age. Right.
Speaker 1: All of these things, he has the same background as
Speaker 1: most of our big tech founders do today. Right, broadly speaking,
Speaker 1: you know, he's gonna wind up being a very different person,
Speaker 1: but he does come from kind of the same starting position.
Speaker 1: One of the real differences with him. All of these
Speaker 1: guys get kind of framed as and I think probably
Speaker 1: believe of themselves as child geniuses. None of them were.
Speaker 1: They're all smart, don't get me wrong. Jeff Bezos, smart guy,
Speaker 1: Bill Gates, smart guy, Steve Jobs, smart guy. None of
Speaker 1: them are are geniuses, right, Steve Wozniak, I think, you know,
Speaker 1: very fair to call that man a technical genius, like
Speaker 1: one once in a generation brain. None of these guys
Speaker 1: are technical geniuses. They're pretty smart. They're pretty smart, and
Speaker 1: they have enough insight to understand where things are going
Speaker 1: to go to take advantage of people who are geniuses.
Speaker 1: Aaron is a legitimate child genius. There is there is
Speaker 1: no argument with that statement that I have ever seen.
Speaker 1: He is, like, for an idea of how intelligent he
Speaker 1: he is, he teaches himself to read and his parents
Speaker 1: don't realize has done it. His mom realizes it when
Speaker 1: they have a sign on the fridge that's like cliped
Speaker 1: out of the newspaper that's like there's you know, a
Speaker 1: free family entertainment you know thing nearby, and he he
Speaker 1: asked his mom, hey, mom, what is and he like
Speaker 1: reads the thing out and she's like, what are you
Speaker 1: talking about? And he points the fridge and she realizes
Speaker 1: that he's reading it. At age three, she has no
Speaker 1: idea that he's he's learned her This is how she
Speaker 1: learns that he knows how to read. Yes, he's reading
Speaker 1: novels by the time he's in kindergarten, and likewise, around
Speaker 1: the same time he teaches himself to read. A little
Speaker 1: bit later, he teaches himself to code. You know, just
Speaker 1: a phenomenal mind by again, have never heard any sort
Speaker 1: of debate on this question. Yeah, so obviously with the
Speaker 1: resources they have. Realizing how fucking smart their kid is,
Speaker 1: his parents decide to send him to a private school
Speaker 1: for gifted children, which he attends through middle school. He
Speaker 1: teaches himself to program pretty early on. His first project
Speaker 1: is a Sudoku like puzzle game. At one point, just
Speaker 1: as like a thing for fun, he builds and programs
Speaker 1: an ATM machine like out of cardboard, and like, I
Speaker 1: don't know what he uses for the computer but he
Speaker 1: gets access to some computer bits he like makes an
Speaker 1: ATM machine.
Speaker 2: Hell yeah.
Speaker 1: And he realized early on that with code, he can
Speaker 1: make things that not only do adults not understand, but
Speaker 1: like seem like magic to most of the adults around
Speaker 1: not his dad. His dad knows how to code, obviously,
Speaker 1: but to most adults. And a side consequence of this
Speaker 1: is that from his early days, you know he's not
Speaker 1: I'm sure you and I, like, I was a precocious kid.
Speaker 1: I started reading by the time I wasn't first grade.
Speaker 1: I was reading novels. You know, I was reading adult
Speaker 1: novels when I was in third grade. I read faster
Speaker 1: and got onto that stuff faster than most people. But
Speaker 1: that's the kind of thing. All of the adults around
Speaker 1: me my family are big readers. I saw them reading
Speaker 1: big books and bigger books than me. So like I
Speaker 1: was doing a thing, I'm like, oh, I'm doing a
Speaker 1: thing that's kind of like the adults, but they are
Speaker 1: still doing that thing, and they're doing it better. Aaron
Speaker 1: is doing a thing adults can't comprehend. Most adults can't
Speaker 1: comprehend coding, especially not on a level he is at.
Speaker 1: And you know that gives him a healthy respect for
Speaker 1: his own intellect, and sometimes it gives him kind of
Speaker 1: an unhealthy respect for his own end. And his younger
Speaker 1: brother has said, like he was kind of a brat, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: he was smarter than most people. He knew he was
Speaker 1: smarter than most of the adults around, and he could
Speaker 1: be a snotty rat about it, right, Like, that's pretty
Speaker 1: inevitable when you've got a kid who's this smart, they're
Speaker 1: going to go through that. It seems to have been
Speaker 1: a phase for him. This is not, like, I don't
Speaker 1: think a lifelong thing for him. Most people say he
Speaker 1: was a very down to earth guy most of his life,
Speaker 1: but he has his brat period. I think that's kind
Speaker 1: of inevitable when you're this smart. His parents were part
Speaker 1: of a reform synagogue, but when he was pretty young,
Speaker 1: their dad moved them to a HBBAD synagogue, which is
Speaker 1: a kind of Orthodox synagogue. Fairly early on, but they're
Speaker 1: not you know, Aaron doesn't find himself compelled by organized religion,
Speaker 1: and when he's pretty young he tells his parents I
Speaker 1: don't believe in God, and they let him drop out. Right.
Speaker 1: They don't seem to have fought him on this right,
Speaker 1: not longer. Not long after that, when after he finishes
Speaker 1: the eighth grade, he's like, hey, I don't want to
Speaker 1: keep going to high school. I want to drop out.
Speaker 1: So he drops out of the ninth grade, and his
Speaker 1: dad lets him do this because he's like, yeah, I
Speaker 1: actually I hated high school too. I got bullied. Aaron
Speaker 1: gets bullied. He's he's mostly thin, but he's kind of
Speaker 1: like pudgy around the middle. He has some body image issues,
Speaker 1: and he's like, he's too smart. Any kid who's that smart,
Speaker 1: it's kind of get bullied. Right. He's a little bitty
Speaker 1: and he's weird. He's going to get bullied, you know.
Speaker 1: It's also inevitable. And he's like, I don't want to
Speaker 1: keep going to high school. I don't think I need this.
Speaker 1: So his dad he gets to drop out and he
Speaker 1: starts taking college courses at a nearby college. And Aaron
Speaker 1: is as good as his word. He is the kind
Speaker 1: of autodidact who has a he's got a wide ranging
Speaker 1: series of interests, and he's good at teaching himself things,
Speaker 1: and unlike a lot of tech wunderkins, he's not just
Speaker 1: obsessed with code. That's kind of his first love. But
Speaker 1: it's honestly, it's right up there with books. He would
Speaker 1: he would read kind of as a young adult, upwards
Speaker 1: of one hundred books a year, and he very quickly
Speaker 1: gets interested in novels by guys like George Saunders, David
Speaker 1: Foster Wallace. These are kind of like some of his
Speaker 1: favorites where he comes up short. He's good at teaching
Speaker 1: himself anything he's interested in. One of the problems he's
Speaker 1: going to have that's kind of a lifelong thing for him,
Speaker 1: is he can't focus on anything that's not really his
Speaker 1: top obsession at the moment. Right. He doesn't have generally
Speaker 1: to kind of long term stay interested in a specific thing.
Speaker 1: He doesn't have a lot of discipline, right, And that
Speaker 1: lack of discipline is kind of married with a basic
Speaker 1: lack of social skills. That again, very much what you'd
Speaker 1: expect from a kid whose parents let him drop out
Speaker 1: of school to raise himself on the internet. One of
Speaker 1: his childhood friends told an interviewer he needed a couple
Speaker 1: of years to be stuffed in a locker to get
Speaker 1: his social stuff together. And I think his friends being
Speaker 1: a little bit, you know, a facetious there, but I
Speaker 1: think the point is that it's not that being bullied
Speaker 1: is good, but the friction. Experiencing friction and having to
Speaker 1: work through it with your peers is good. That is necessary. Right,
Speaker 1: You don't need to get beaten the shit out of you,
Speaker 1: but you do need friction. You need to You need
Speaker 1: to be in situations where like, well I don't like
Speaker 1: the people here, but we have to accomplish a thing together.
Speaker 1: That's necessary. You know, I'm optimal health.
Speaker 2: I think I'm very glad I went to public school.
Speaker 1: Yeah, same here, you know.
Speaker 2: Like even though yeah, like middle school was a hell
Speaker 2: nightmare that I mostly disassociated the entire time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I didn't like. But I think it's broadly speaking,
Speaker 1: there's there's things you get out of that that are necessary,
Speaker 1: and Aaron's not going to get some of that stuff.
Speaker 1: This is something that his family's kind of remarked on sense,
Speaker 1: So I'm not like, I'm not making this judgment on them.
Speaker 1: This is like based on stuff as family members of sex.
Speaker 2: Right, he did not have.
Speaker 1: You know, he has a voracious appetite for knowledge when
Speaker 1: he doesn't have as an appetite for like actual food. Right,
Speaker 1: he is a famously picky eater. He preferred white and
Speaker 1: I think yellow foods and kind of he hated He's
Speaker 1: the opposite of Steve Jobs. He hated fruit. He like
Speaker 1: wouldn't eat fruit basically, and he pretty much didn't eat
Speaker 1: vegetables other than fried potatoes because basically one hundred percent
Speaker 1: of people will eat fried potatoes, right, Yeah, no, there's
Speaker 1: no Yeah, yeah, I don't know that I've ever met
Speaker 1: anyone who won't eat French fries. Yea, so for health
Speaker 1: reasons obviously, but like, I don't know any all the
Speaker 1: picky eaters. I note, like fries tend to be a
Speaker 1: thing there. I don't know. I'm sure there are people
Speaker 1: who don't, but that is like weird how many people
Speaker 1: are like, yeah, but I'll eat fries.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like fried carbohydrates are tasty and were most people
Speaker 2: are hardwired to understand that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's the like you the I don't know,
Speaker 1: this is a tangent, but like when when Europeans realized
Speaker 1: there were potatoes and what you could do with them,
Speaker 1: there was the sudden like, oh my god, this is
Speaker 1: what we've been saying. This is the real gold of
Speaker 1: El Dorado is fucking potatoes.
Speaker 2: Totally. Yeah, it's hard it's still hard to imagine Europe
Speaker 2: without corn, tomatoes or potatoes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like it's it is, it is, Yeah, turnips and
Speaker 1: I don't know, drinking yourself into an early grave. So
Speaker 1: Aarin obviously he benefits from having a dad who's technically inclined.
Speaker 1: The two talked regularly about what the Internet was likely
Speaker 1: to mean for the future. His dad later said, we
Speaker 1: were going online when the web was really in its infancy,
Speaker 1: before there were graphical browsers, and very quickly we both
Speaker 1: realized that this was something that was going to change everything.
Speaker 1: A number of people came to that realization, and many
Speaker 1: of them went on to monetize the Internet in ways
Speaker 1: that have contributed to a great deal of harm. Aaron's
Speaker 1: interests from the beginning had a lot less to do
Speaker 1: with money and a lot to do with the sharing
Speaker 1: of information. In nineteen ninety nine, at age twelve, he
Speaker 1: created the Info Network, a user generated encyclopedia. Wikipedia didn't
Speaker 1: launch until two years later, a fact that always seemed
Speaker 1: to so again when he's twelve, he creates Wikipedia right like,
Speaker 1: with the same basic idea. It doesn't take off Wikipedia does,
Speaker 1: and that fact kind of you get the feeling it
Speaker 1: kind of peeves him a little bit, he would later
Speaker 1: tell an interviewer. It was basically Wikipedia, except long before
Speaker 1: Wikipedia had launched. But I was in middle school at
Speaker 1: the time, so my site didn't make it into the
Speaker 1: New York Times. And that's kind of and he's probably right, right, yeah, Now,
Speaker 1: totally Wipedia got the early you know interest And that's why.
Speaker 2: I says something that was in the air I guess,
Speaker 2: you know, yeah, which is.
Speaker 1: Nothing against the wikipedi. I don't. I'm not saying the
Speaker 1: Wikipedia people ripped Erin's ripped off a twelve year old,
Speaker 1: but it shows you. It shows you not just how
Speaker 1: smart he is, but like where his mind is going
Speaker 1: in terms of what people can get out of the
Speaker 1: Internet and should get out of the Internet. Right, And
Speaker 1: you know, Wikipedia, not that there aren't some critiques of it,
Speaker 1: but like one of the very best things the Internet's
Speaker 1: ever produced, one of the most important and useful things
Speaker 1: the Internet's ever.
Speaker 2: Made, and one of the only artifacts from this time,
Speaker 2: the time when the Internet was going to make us
Speaker 2: more free instead of less free.
Speaker 1: Yes, and one of the only ones that has not,
Speaker 1: I don't think in any meaningful sense, because like Google
Speaker 1: is was at one point, a pretty wonderful tool and
Speaker 1: has been deeply corrupted and polluted. I don't feel like
Speaker 1: Wikipedia has I'm very pro Wikipedia. Again, there's issues with it,
Speaker 1: you know, that's a separate topic, but pretty wonderful contribution.
Speaker 1: So anyway, you know, the fact this errands Wikipedia does
Speaker 1: not take off, but it does earn him a significant
Speaker 1: degree of early recognition. He became a finalist for the
Speaker 1: rs Digital Prize, which recognized young people who built valuable
Speaker 1: non commercial websites. He wins a thousand bucks for this,
Speaker 1: and he wins a trip to MIT, where for the
Speaker 1: first time he meets some of the genius coders and
Speaker 1: engineers he admired in person. Now, Aaron had already started
Speaker 1: communicating online with some of the luminaries in his field,
Speaker 1: but meeting guys like Philip Greenspun, who developed one of
Speaker 1: the very first photo sharing sites and is kind of
Speaker 1: he's a pioneer in the concept of how digital communities
Speaker 1: are going to work. He's he's a guy who is thinking,
Speaker 1: lays a lot of the groundwork for what becomes social media.
Speaker 1: You know, Aaron has his first conversations with this guy
Speaker 1: about the open source movement, which is popular among the
Speaker 1: nerds who are still the center of gravity in online technology,
Speaker 1: and he becomes entranced. He decides he wants to join
Speaker 1: the World Wide Web Consortium today it's the main international
Speaker 1: standards organization for the Internet, and he has turned down
Speaker 1: for joining because he's thirteen years old, Right, you know,
Speaker 1: they're like, well, we don't we don't let you know,
Speaker 1: this is like, yeah, we don't let their dan the
Speaker 1: yarrel's in. I don't think they're trying to be shitty,
Speaker 1: they're just yeah, it's a sensible rule for a kid
Speaker 1: who's not Aaron. Aaron refuses to take no for an answer,
Speaker 1: and I'm going to quote from a write up in
Speaker 1: The New Yorker here. Undaunted, he read through the rules
Speaker 1: of the Consortium and found that every member was allowed
Speaker 1: to send a delegate. He looked through the lists to
Speaker 1: find somebody who hadn't sent a delegate, and he found one,
Speaker 1: the HTML Writer's Guild. He emailed the group and asked
Speaker 1: if he could participate in a W three C work
Speaker 1: group as its delegate, and it had no objection. So
Speaker 1: he kind of finds a sideways way in. Right, he
Speaker 1: hears there's a rule against this. He finds a way
Speaker 1: around it. You know, this is going to be a
Speaker 1: pattern in his life. This willingness, first off, an unwillingness
Speaker 1: to take no for an answer he doesn't think there's
Speaker 1: a good reason for it, and second an unwillingness to
Speaker 1: listen to rules that he thinks are stupid. Right, that's
Speaker 1: going to characterize a lot of his future. Another thing
Speaker 1: that's going to characterize his life from this point forward
Speaker 1: is an understanding that unpleasant aspects of life, specifically the
Speaker 1: bureaucracies that we all have to engage in to some
Speaker 1: extent to survive, can be avoided. Right, And this is
Speaker 1: the thing that has positive and negative outcomes for him. Right.
Speaker 1: His dad's going to later trace the attitude back to
Speaker 1: his upbringing and the decision he made to let Aaron
Speaker 1: drop out of school. Quote, this is his father. He
Speaker 1: also never learned to do anything that he didn't want
Speaker 1: to do. College is very important that you're forced to
Speaker 1: study stuff you're not interested in. But he hated the
Speaker 1: bureaucracy of it, the dumb rules, the pointless assignments. He
Speaker 1: just rejected that. It was like getting him to eat vegetables.
Speaker 2: I wonder how much this is like father self blaming,
Speaker 2: not to spoil anyone who has that. I only know
Speaker 2: the like Cliff Snows. Yeah, of this man's story, I
Speaker 2: think it makes it based on his life.
Speaker 1: I think he's probably kind of accurately describing his son. Right.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: This isn't a big track because Aaron accomplishes, spoiler a
Speaker 1: lot of shit in the time that he's around. But
Speaker 1: I think this is fair. He does not. He is
Speaker 1: someone who's who's rarely going to stick with a project
Speaker 1: for very long. And I think it is because and
Speaker 1: he's also someone who he kind of freezes up when
Speaker 1: he is sort of confronted with a lot of the
Speaker 1: realities bureaucracy because he just doesn't have to. He's most
Speaker 1: of his life able to get away from it, right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And again there's a lot of value in understanding. I
Speaker 1: run into this with some of my friends who kind
Speaker 1: of were more on the anarchist punk side of thing.
Speaker 1: When when you have to deal with the legal system
Speaker 1: and stuff, because I've had a lot more dealings with
Speaker 1: it where it's like there's just ways that you have
Speaker 1: to approach it to deal with it. It's the same
Speaker 1: thing with talking to when when my close friends or
Speaker 1: whatever have an issue with like a company they need
Speaker 1: to get like a refund or something. I know how
Speaker 1: to talk to representatives and shit to make things happen, right,
Speaker 1: I just I have learned that shit over the years.
Speaker 1: It's a skill.
Speaker 2: Well, it's like when cops are messing with you and
Speaker 2: you have to like you have to shut the fuck up,
Speaker 2: but you have to do it politely and respectfully.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: You know, like there are ways to navigate every system
Speaker 2: of power, and often the smartest thing to do is
Speaker 2: to navigate it rather than just fight every aspect of
Speaker 2: it every turn.
Speaker 1: Yeah. There's this moment during early on in the protests
Speaker 1: in Portland where you know, we were filming some people
Speaker 1: getting arrested and the police said that they were going
Speaker 1: to arrest me and my media partner. There were a
Speaker 1: couple of protesters behind us and they're like, you're all
Speaker 1: under arrest and I was like, what are we under
Speaker 1: arrest for? And he said for curfew violation because the
Speaker 1: mayor had put it a curfew, and so I was like, well,
Speaker 1: the mayor's curfew exempts media. We're you know, press with
Speaker 1: badges and stuff on, and you know there's other people
Speaker 1: who's trying to argue with the cops, and I just
Speaker 1: you know, yelling at them, and I just kind of
Speaker 1: keep engaging him in conversation. He's like, I don't care,
Speaker 1: I'm go to arrest you. And finally what I say
Speaker 1: is like the mayor has said that we're exempt. Are
Speaker 1: you countermanding the mayor's orders? And he's a switch flipped
Speaker 1: in his head. Yeah, And not only did my partner
Speaker 1: and I not get arrested, but like the protesters behind
Speaker 1: us did not because it was just like, yeah, you
Speaker 1: had to you have to. Like, it's just this understanding
Speaker 1: of how bureaucracy and the people who make up bureaucracy
Speaker 1: like function.
Speaker 2: Right, totally.
Speaker 1: Aaron's not going to have a lot of that understanding, right,
Speaker 1: he builds he does build a lot more of it
Speaker 1: later in his life, but it's he starts out with
Speaker 1: less of it than I think even a normal person does,
Speaker 1: because he's just he's smart enough to get around it
Speaker 1: for so long.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and he's also engaging in the adult world because
Speaker 2: a lot of his intelligence levels are at adult levels.
Speaker 2: But maybe his like social and other understandings are.
Speaker 1: Exactly yes, and the adults around him are all and
Speaker 1: Cory Doctro, who's a friend of his from a very
Speaker 1: young age. We'll talk about this because Erin is small,
Speaker 1: and as we'll talk about, he's kind of sickly. The
Speaker 1: adults around him that he's quickly living in the world
Speaker 1: with are very protective of him, and I do think
Speaker 1: they're able to kind of shield him from a lot
Speaker 1: of these sort of realities of dealing with the system,
Speaker 1: you know, so he doesn't build up some of those
Speaker 1: skills as early as he maybe otherwise would have. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so you know, a lot of positive stuff happening for
Speaker 1: him in his early adolescence. A less positive thing that
Speaker 1: happens during this time is that when he's twelve, so
Speaker 1: kind of the same year he makes his Wikipedia thing,
Speaker 1: he's diagnosed with ulcerative colitis. This may help to exchange
Speaker 1: to explain some of his pickiness as an eater. Obviously,
Speaker 1: it's never a pleasant condition to deal with. Aaron seems
Speaker 1: to have particularly struggled. He would often lose days or
Speaker 1: entire weeks to abdominal pain intense it would leave him
Speaker 1: curled up on the floor. So he's always got this
Speaker 1: regular thing in his life where like sometimes he just
Speaker 1: won't be able to work because he's got he's in
Speaker 1: so much pain. You know, this is a regular thing
Speaker 1: he struggles with. That said, when he's able to work,
Speaker 1: he's so much smarter than most people that he still
Speaker 1: accomplishes much more than people who are not dealing with
Speaker 1: this kind of physical stuff, right well accomplish. In August
Speaker 1: of two thousand, Aaron finds himself on an email discussion
Speaker 1: thread for a group of programmers who are designing something
Speaker 1: called RSSI, which stands for Real Simple Syndication. It is
Speaker 1: a web feed that lets users build their own news aggregators,
Speaker 1: like pushing content from various sites into a single feed.
Speaker 1: And it's also it's one of the backroun like foundational
Speaker 1: technologies of the Internet. Every website you go to basically
Speaker 1: uses RSS to push, you know, and collect and stuff
Speaker 1: the things that they're publishing on a regular basis. You know,
Speaker 1: this is one of the most significant develop lipments in
Speaker 1: the early Internet, right if you're thinking about like the
Speaker 1: invention of like electricity, it's almost like a power transformer,
Speaker 1: I think might be a good way to describe it.
Speaker 1: It is absolutely foundational to how the Internet is used. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: so Aaron is going to be, and there's a whole
Speaker 1: team of people. All of the others of him are
Speaker 1: adults who are working on this, but he's going to
Speaker 1: be one of them, right, So he gets into this group,
Speaker 1: and again it's just kind of the nerds that find
Speaker 1: themselves are working on this. They're all handling different parts
Speaker 1: of the project. And Aaron quickly becomes involved. And I
Speaker 1: think everyone who was there agrees he contributed. It's not
Speaker 1: like he did not invent RSS, right, A lot of
Speaker 1: people did, but his contributions were substantial to this thing
Speaker 1: that is a fundamental undergirding of how the Internet functions today.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: And while this is happening, while he's working on this project,
Speaker 1: aspects of an ideology start to take shape in him
Speaker 1: based on his interactions with these other people who are
Speaker 1: both coders and also hackers, right, because at this period
Speaker 1: in the Internet, they're pretty much the same thing.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: All the people who are building these are also hackers,
Speaker 1: you know. And I'm going to quote from an article
Speaker 1: in the New Republic. This ethos carried its own ideology,
Speaker 1: the ideology of free flowing information, or open access, as
Speaker 1: it became known. A self taught computer savant rarely felt
Speaker 1: more helpless than when he was cut off from the
Speaker 1: websites and books he used to navigate the world. Without them,
Speaker 1: he couldn't learn what he needed to earn a living,
Speaker 1: much less invent some disruptive technology. I'd skipped college, says
Speaker 1: Kevin Burton, who first met Schwartz through the RSS group.
Speaker 1: The fact that I couldn't access materials available to college
Speaker 1: students was why open access was always important to me.
Speaker 1: So Aaron is an not a what did act? So
Speaker 1: are a lot of these guys, and he goes from
Speaker 1: just kind of like this is just how it I
Speaker 1: am and how I learned to thinking about this more
Speaker 1: long ideological lines. Right, this is not just a thing
Speaker 1: for me, but this is a thing for other people. Right.
Speaker 1: This is fundamental to allowing human beings to progress. Is
Speaker 1: making sure that information is accessible. I know, yeah, as
Speaker 1: much as possible. If you go through enough recollections of
Speaker 1: Erin during this period, people who were in this working
Speaker 1: group with him will note that he was again, he
Speaker 1: could be a little bit of a brat, right. His
Speaker 1: questions are always good, but he could be kind of haughty.
Speaker 1: He could be kind of aggressive sometimes, and how he
Speaker 1: asked them, you know, he has a lot of this attitude.
Speaker 1: He doesn't understand where you're doing something. He's like, why
Speaker 1: are we doing this? Does this doesn't seem like the
Speaker 1: best thing to do? What about doing this? This is
Speaker 1: coming from a mix of genuine curiosity and he's he's
Speaker 1: he could be a little bit of snotty, right like
Speaker 1: he's he's a kid, you know, yeah, yeah, And he
Speaker 1: also he also this is you know, not entirely a
Speaker 1: negative thing. He fundamentally he doesn't have kind of a
Speaker 1: baseline level of respect based on people having greater experience, right,
Speaker 1: because he doesn't have this assumption that that means they
Speaker 1: know more than him, and often they don't, you know,
Speaker 1: right anyway, you know who does know more than all
Speaker 1: of us?
Speaker 2: The concept of potatoes the.
Speaker 1: Potato, I mean, yes, the potatoes are are wise indeed,
Speaker 1: but the sponsors of this pod cast no more than anything.
Speaker 1: So listen to them and do whatever they tell you.
Speaker 2: Let them sprout in your mind like a potato in
Speaker 2: a dark drawer.
Speaker 1: Or very true or literally don't and we're back. So
Speaker 1: you know again, Aaron still a kid, And obviously while
Speaker 1: he could be kind of a little maybe a little
Speaker 1: embrace of sometimes that doesn't turn anyone off from working
Speaker 1: with him, and in fact, his collaborators who know him
Speaker 1: only from his kind of not quite an honest but
Speaker 1: they don't know who he is, right, responses are are
Speaker 1: only put out because they do in person meetings regularly
Speaker 1: for members of this group, and he doesn't make any
Speaker 1: of the in person meetings. And yeah, and so I'm
Speaker 1: asking like, hey, man, like why don't you ever show
Speaker 1: up whenever we meet in person? He's like, well, i'd
Speaker 1: have to ask my parents because I'm fourteen. And then
Speaker 1: they're like, oh shit. I had a version that happened
Speaker 1: with Garrison when we started like working with them, right,
Speaker 1: like one of our mutual friends, like we had been
Speaker 1: hanging out with them, you know, after a horrible riot
Speaker 1: where all nearly got arrested, and like the next day,
Speaker 1: our friend texts me and is like, do you know
Speaker 1: that they're seventeen? I was like no, in fact I
Speaker 1: did not.
Speaker 2: Oh shit, that's how you learned. Yeah, yeah, I used
Speaker 2: to hitchhike with my friend who had a note from
Speaker 2: their from her parents being like, yes, I know what
Speaker 2: my daughter is doing. It's fine.
Speaker 1: At this point, you know, they start he starts being
Speaker 1: able to show up in person more often. These people,
Speaker 1: I think Corey doctro is on this list recognize like
Speaker 1: real life and they're all blown away by like how
Speaker 1: smart this kid, how young? And again they have this
Speaker 1: kind of it's this mix of this feeling like we
Speaker 1: need to protect this kid and also this kid is
Speaker 1: the fucking future, right yeah, and so he is kind
Speaker 1: of immediately ushered in and adopted almost by some of
Speaker 1: the most luminous names in technology, right he. But he
Speaker 1: meets and becomes to some extent a little bit of
Speaker 1: a protege of a guy named Tim berners Lee. Berners
Speaker 1: Lee is an MIT professor. He invented the world Wide Web.
Speaker 1: This is not one of those things when people say
Speaker 1: so and so invented this and it's like bullshit. It's like,
Speaker 1: well they invented no, no, he The world Wide Web
Speaker 1: is Tim berners Lee's invention. He created this, right, He,
Speaker 1: in a very literal sense, created this starting in nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty nine, he sketches out he's working for CERN at
Speaker 1: this point. And here one of the things that CERN,
Speaker 1: which is a big research institute. All these colleges, universities,
Speaker 1: they all have things that are versions of like what
Speaker 1: the Internet is going to be. These electronic communications networks
Speaker 1: that allow them to communicate on campus, allow them to
Speaker 1: communicate with each other and to some extent with other organizations,
Speaker 1: but none of them are built around the same standard,
Speaker 1: so letting everything call is a huge fucking mess. And
Speaker 1: berners Lee is like, we need a standard solution for
Speaker 1: how electronic communication is going to work, and he sketches
Speaker 1: out he designs the world Wide Web. That's literally the
Speaker 1: thing that he makes, Like, he comes up with a
Speaker 1: plan for it's going to be a global web of
Speaker 1: individual pages, each of which has their own address. They're
Speaker 1: all coded in HTML, and because they're on the same standard,
Speaker 1: all of these websites and whatnot can communicate with each other.
Speaker 1: This is the foundation of everything that makes the modern
Speaker 1: Internet possible. And when berners Lee creates this, he has
Speaker 1: this choice, which is that's a patentable idea, right he
Speaker 1: could have been the man with the patent for the Internet.
Speaker 1: He makes a key decision he chooses not to. He decides,
Speaker 1: I am not going to have a patent on this,
Speaker 1: so anybody can do this because because he's definitely a
Speaker 1: cool dude, right as far as I'm aware of and
Speaker 1: as a because he makes this fundamental decision, he's kind
Speaker 1: of viewed as a saint within the open source movement
Speaker 1: in a lot of ways, right.
Speaker 2: Like not surprising, but it's also a household name.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, he's also not a and he's not worth
Speaker 1: more money than anyone else in the world could never
Speaker 1: conceive of being worth it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like, fortunately there's that like thing where money of
Speaker 2: only buys happiness up to like seventy K year and
Speaker 2: then it just level alone.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so like I'm sure it's up to one hundred
Speaker 1: K year and whatever now.
Speaker 2: But yeah, oh yeah, that makes sense. That was like
Speaker 2: ten years ago.
Speaker 1: Yeah, berners Lee, you know he choose anyway, he meets
Speaker 1: erin early on and is so impressed he basically endorses
Speaker 1: him as his heir. Right, this is the kid who's
Speaker 1: going to like take the Internet into the future, Like
Speaker 1: this is the future of all this stuff that we're
Speaker 1: working on. This this really kind of utopian idea of
Speaker 1: what connecting the world is going to result in. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: So this guy, he's so impressed by Aaron he basically
Speaker 1: like endorses him as like this is my successor. Right,
Speaker 1: this is going to be the guy who takes the
Speaker 1: Internet into whatever it becomes in the future. That elevates
Speaker 1: Erin immediately. It kind of int like, immediately he's in
Speaker 1: the inner circle of people who are inventing the Internet,
Speaker 1: which is definitely happening at this period of time, and
Speaker 1: Erin gets kind of suddenly thrown into the tech conference
Speaker 1: circuit where he is kind of an object of marvel
Speaker 1: among the mostly much older men who had helped to
Speaker 1: build the foundations of the Internet. There's videos of this
Speaker 1: time of him, you know, speaking at conferences and stuff,
Speaker 1: and they tend to show Aaron who is absurdly small,
Speaker 1: almost especially next to these grown men, giving pretty thoughtful
Speaker 1: and complex answers while men decades his seniors sit next
Speaker 1: to him on stage. At age fifteen, he sends an
Speaker 1: email to a guy named Lawrence Lessig. Lessig is a
Speaker 1: legal scholar who is an early prominent activist for what
Speaker 1: we call the open Internet, and Lessig is in the
Speaker 1: process of inventing something called the creative commons at this point. Right,
Speaker 1: Lessig is the creator of the creative comments, which basically
Speaker 1: gives creators. You and I've both used creative comments, right, So,
Speaker 1: most people who make things that are cool. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: it allows creators of all kinds of meat the ability
Speaker 1: to copyright their work in ways that allow for adaptation
Speaker 1: and distribution much more easily without involving a publisher or whatever. Right.
Speaker 1: You don't have to have that, like, you have this
Speaker 1: kind of ready made kit for figuring out the rights
Speaker 1: status of your work and setting that up. So Aaron
Speaker 1: sends this guy an email, and I'm going to quote
Speaker 1: from an article in Rolling Stone for what happens next.
Speaker 1: Lawrence Lessig, now a professor at Harvard, gave Schwartz his
Speaker 1: first job, flying him out to San Francisco to write
Speaker 1: code for Creative Comments, a nonprofit that allows users to
Speaker 1: copyright the material in less restrictive ways. When the site
Speaker 1: celebrated its launch on December sixteenth, two thousand and two,
Speaker 1: Schwartz was invited to speak to the crowd of six hundred,
Speaker 1: which included Internet luminaries like cred Neumark, the founder of Craigslist.
Speaker 1: So Aaron gets up. This is Lessig talking. So Aeron
Speaker 1: gets up. He's not even big enough to stand over
Speaker 1: the podium, and he explains what the architecture of the
Speaker 1: site is, and the audience is just amazed that this
Speaker 1: was a fifteen year old kid, So he is. He
Speaker 1: helps to create creative comments. It's less ex idea. He
Speaker 1: does the coding for it, right, So he is fifteen
Speaker 1: teen two of the things that are fundamental underpinnings of
Speaker 1: the Internet. To this day, he's had a significant hand
Speaker 1: in making RSS and creative comments fifteen years old. Now,
Speaker 1: it is worth noting that Lessig is at this point
Speaker 1: in time, like a lot of us was, not, like
Speaker 1: a lot of people were at this period of time,
Speaker 1: one of the wild eyed optimists of the Internet. Right,
Speaker 1: he is actually not someone who feels it's inevitable that
Speaker 1: the Internet will lead us into a golden age of freedom.
Speaker 1: As a legal scholar, he is well aware of the
Speaker 1: weapons available to the enemy, and he knows that they
Speaker 1: are terrible in nature and inexhaustible nearly in quantity.
Speaker 2: Which makes sense to create something like creative commons because
Speaker 2: it's an attempt to keep the Internet on a decent track.
Speaker 1: Yes, exactly, And he's kind of critically and again he'll
Speaker 1: have an influence on Aaron, but he is not one
Speaker 1: of these people. And like a lot of the people
Speaker 1: that Aaron is close to that are making stuff with him,
Speaker 1: He's not one of these people who views the Internet
Speaker 1: as like this is all fundamentally got to work out
Speaker 1: for us. He sees the dangers because he understands the
Speaker 1: fucking law. Lawrence had gotten famous in hacker circles for
Speaker 1: a book he wrote nineteen ninety nine called Code and
Speaker 1: Other Laws of Cyberspace, And again he is a kind
Speaker 1: of definitely a visionary. His book argues that programmers are
Speaker 1: going to have more influence than laws on the development
Speaker 1: of the Internet. And to explain kind of where his
Speaker 1: thinking is going and why it is relevant to us today,
Speaker 1: I want to read an extended quote from Noah Scheiber
Speaker 1: writing for The New Republic, because it describes an extremely
Speaker 1: important moment in our early conceptions of the Internet. Quote.
Speaker 1: The law could tell you who to associate with and
Speaker 1: who not to, but you could always ignore it. If,
Speaker 1: on the other hand, a programmer decided it should be
Speaker 1: impossible to connect with a certain type of website, the
Speaker 1: average person had no way around it. The programmer was god.
Speaker 1: Suffice it to say, audiences were intrigued. In the late nineties,
Speaker 1: Lessig taught a class about the Internet that was open
Speaker 1: to both Harvard law students and MIT engineers. Early in
Speaker 1: the term, he asked, how do you know if something
Speaker 1: you're doing is wrong. The lawyer said that an action
Speaker 1: was wrong if it was against the law. The hackers said,
Speaker 1: it was only wrong if you failed to accomplish it.
Speaker 1: It was the most fundamental statement of the hacker ethos,
Speaker 1: and it seemed, and it teemed with idealism. If it
Speaker 1: were possible to increase human welfare through engineering, through delivering
Speaker 1: more social interaction or knowledge or happiness to more people
Speaker 1: than it would be a moral not to. There was
Speaker 1: only one hitch, which Lesseig dutifully explained, but which often
Speaker 1: went unheeded. The law would not be standing by idly.
Speaker 1: The belief had always been that lawyers can say what
Speaker 1: they want and will always have the technology to route
Speaker 1: around it, says Been Adida, a programmer who worked with
Speaker 1: Lessigan Schwartz. To the hackers, the law was at best anachronistic,
Speaker 1: at worst arbitrary, even cruel. Lesseg was one of the
Speaker 1: first folks to say, you know the power that code
Speaker 1: has over the way people interact online, You would be
Speaker 1: foolish to think the law is not going to regulate it.
Speaker 1: Adida recalls kind of a key key moment there.
Speaker 2: No, yeah, no, I'm just slept like thinking about it.
Speaker 2: I'm like, I mean, what it's like, i mean, it's
Speaker 2: all the movie Hackers, right, yeah, yeah, like I mean
Speaker 2: obviously doesn't come from the movie Hackers. The movie Hackers
Speaker 2: as attempted a representing something. It was like a thing
Speaker 2: where like hackers sort of at the time or a
Speaker 2: little bit like what the fuck? And then Hackers, like
Speaker 2: a couple of years later, I was like, that rules,
Speaker 2: that's our fucking legacy, you know. Yeah, but like this
Speaker 2: idea that and also this idea that like something is
Speaker 2: only wrong if you fail to do it right a
Speaker 2: sketchy you know. And it's like it's interesting and you
Speaker 2: can see how it was often or often intended as
Speaker 2: a force for freedom twenty years ago and is now
Speaker 2: that same concept is just.
Speaker 1: Like deeply, let's see what else, right, Yeah. A lot
Speaker 1: of people who were hackers, or at least who came
Speaker 1: out of the movement that came out of descended from that,
Speaker 1: are now into this like dark enlightenment reactionary shit. They're
Speaker 1: talking race like, yeah, the there's a fork that is
Speaker 1: going to occur in this community, and a lot of
Speaker 1: the people in it and what we're talking about, and
Speaker 1: you know who we're talking about now. Aaron is certainly
Speaker 1: on the side of the light side of that fork, absolutely,
Speaker 1: And the fork again, as a spoiler, you could if
Speaker 1: you wanted to split the fork at his death when
Speaker 1: it occurs.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that makes sense.
Speaker 1: Honestly, you would not be wrong to necessarily when you.
Speaker 2: Say indie media leads to Twitter, leads to Elon Musk Twitter,
Speaker 2: you know, like.
Speaker 1: Yep, yeah, exactly. At age seventeen, Aaron is accepted to
Speaker 1: Stanford for obvious reasons. Not hard to see how that happens.
Speaker 1: Aaron is obviously brilliant. Anyone with eyes can see that
Speaker 1: he's going to change the world, and Stanford wants some
Speaker 1: of his shine for themselves, right. That is what they do,
Speaker 1: that is how they make their bread. But as soon
Speaker 1: as Aaron arrives at the elite West Coast school, he
Speaker 1: sees it for the sham that it was. He writes
Speaker 1: at the time that Stanford is quote an idyllic little
Speaker 1: school in California, where the sun is always shining, and
Speaker 1: the grass is always green, and the kids are always
Speaker 1: out a tan. After three days at Stanford, Aaron decides
Speaker 1: to attend a party, he kind of forces himself to go.
Speaker 1: An article in The New Republic makes it seem like
Speaker 1: this was kind of an anthropological experiment by Aaron, more
Speaker 1: of that than an attempt to enjoy himself.
Speaker 2: Quote.
Speaker 1: He merely wanted to document the mating rituals of the teenager,
Speaker 1: a species that alternatively mystified and horrified him. In my
Speaker 1: culture of vaguely technical people, people converse by sharing information
Speaker 1: through mutually beneficial discussion and debate, he wrote on his blog.
Speaker 1: But the teenager system is altogether different and wholly alien
Speaker 1: to them. He is frustrated by more than just a
Speaker 1: lack of social skills. Aaron is angry that Stanford required
Speaker 1: ID cards with RFID transmitters, which can be used to
Speaker 1: track students. He hates the library because of how it's organized.
Speaker 1: He thinks it's an efficient and I'm sure he's right
Speaker 1: about that. And he was disgusted by the hygiene levels
Speaker 1: at the shared student facilities like the laundromat. As a
Speaker 1: consequence of this disillusionment, he spends most of his time
Speaker 1: in college hanging out with adults, particularly Lawrence Lessig and
Speaker 1: friend of the Pod Corey, doctor Rowe Lessig is again
Speaker 1: the guy who funded Creative Commons, and Corey is an
Speaker 1: activist and a wildly prolific author, very good author. They were,
Speaker 1: in short, good influences. But one also has to assume
Speaker 1: any seventeen year old who's hanging out with these guys
Speaker 1: and out their fellow teenagers, they're not going to get
Speaker 1: better at.
Speaker 2: Fitting in, right, Like, yeah, that's fair.
Speaker 1: Not that that's the most important thing, but you know,
Speaker 1: that's just a thing that's happening to him, right, And again,
Speaker 1: given some of the shit Stanford grads have recently been
Speaker 1: responsible for might have been for the best, like those
Speaker 1: guy's worse influence and not his fellow Stanford students. So
Speaker 1: this is not without stress though, right, The fact that
Speaker 1: he is adopted by, welcomed in by all of these
Speaker 1: very accomplished adults is not a thing devoid of stress
Speaker 1: for him. Right. The sheer odd confidence guys like Tim Berners,
Speaker 1: Lee and Lessig have for Schwartz is at that's a
Speaker 1: lot to put on the shoulders of a seventeen Yeah, right,
Speaker 1: being told you're the future of the Internet, You're going
Speaker 1: to be critical in this thing that is we believe
Speaker 1: necessary for the development of the human race. To be
Speaker 1: told that before you're even seventeen, that's a lot to
Speaker 1: have on your shoulders. Right. Aaron has absolutely shown an
Speaker 1: appetite for this work, but that doesn't mean there's not
Speaker 1: a burden there, right. Lisa Rain, one of Lesseg's aides,
Speaker 1: later told New Republic, with his intellect, we wanted to
Speaker 1: harness it for good instead of evil. I was worried
Speaker 1: that Microsoft would get a hold of him, which, again,
Speaker 1: for these adults, not an unreasonable thing to be concerned about.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: So, I think, you know, all of this is based
Speaker 1: in a pretty wonderful amount of confidence that even love
Speaker 1: these guys had for Erin. Doctor Oh again has made
Speaker 1: the statement that a couple of times because, in part
Speaker 1: because Erin is so small, so vulnerable, you have this
Speaker 1: instinctivety to protect him, and this married with this intense
Speaker 1: faith in him. I think this led to a situation
Speaker 1: where Erin felt a lot of personal responsibility for the
Speaker 1: future of the Internet and people at a young age,
Speaker 1: and that's going to be difficult for him. That's going
Speaker 1: to be an added stress in his life. It is
Speaker 1: also worth noting here that Aaron is one of the
Speaker 1: most prolific bloggers of his generation. His need to create
Speaker 1: pros and work his thoughts and feelings out through the
Speaker 1: written word is as strong, if not stronger, than his
Speaker 1: desire to code, and in fact, there will be a
Speaker 1: point in his life when he's like, I don't I
Speaker 1: think I'm done with coding. I want to become an author.
Speaker 1: I would rather be like a middling author than a
Speaker 1: great coder. Like that's the thing he expresses at a
Speaker 1: point that's real.
Speaker 2: Yeah, did he write much fiction or anything like that?
Speaker 2: I guess we'll talk.
Speaker 1: About He had a novel that he kind of repeatedly
Speaker 1: worked on that he never I don't think he ever
Speaker 1: quite finished it. There's a book of his essays that's out.
Speaker 1: He's got this is again. You know, he's still a teenager.
Speaker 1: As smart as he is, He's working a lot of
Speaker 1: shit out. And one of those things is he has
Speaker 1: this deep desire for privacy. All of his friends will
Speaker 1: say he had a lot of issues sometimes with his
Speaker 1: friends knowing each other because he hated the idea that
Speaker 1: people would be talking about him, even if it was positive,
Speaker 1: when he wasn't there, Like, he just really had a
Speaker 1: gut revulsion of that This was kind of ward in
Speaker 1: him with his need to publish every single thing that
Speaker 1: he thought on the Internet under his name. Right, this
Speaker 1: is a complicated thing for this kid to deal with. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I'm going to quote from Rolling Stone again here.
Speaker 1: On his blog, he had told this story about having
Speaker 1: a crush on this girl and stalking her. Lessig recalls,
Speaker 1: not in a gross way, it was cute. Anyway. He
Speaker 1: came to a reception at the law school whe Lessig
Speaker 1: was a professor, and I recount this during a conversation.
Speaker 1: He takes me aside and he goes, why would you
Speaker 1: do that? I said, what do you mean? He said,
Speaker 1: tell the secret? I said secret? You blogged it? He said, yeah,
Speaker 1: well I blogged it, meaning I blogged it for the
Speaker 1: people who read my blog. I didn't blog it so
Speaker 1: the whole world would know. And he is he's dealing
Speaker 1: with an early version of what we're all going to
Speaker 1: deal with as the Internet goes from this thing that
Speaker 1: only a few weirdos are on, do this thing that
Speaker 1: everyone is on by default, where he's like, you know,
Speaker 1: Lesseg's like, well you published this, right, why can't I
Speaker 1: talk about this? And he's like, well, I published it
Speaker 1: for the Internet, now for the real world.
Speaker 2: I'm very glad that I was an adult before social
Speaker 2: media and live journal on show.
Speaker 1: Absolutely Jesus, speaking of Jesus, buy some products. Jesus will
Speaker 1: be happy.
Speaker 2: Jesus, We're back.
Speaker 1: So Aaron decides to leave Stanford. He's there like a
Speaker 1: year and he decides to bounce, and that next summer
Speaker 1: he gets approached by what's called why Combinator, and why
Speaker 1: Combinator is an incubator for tech founders.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: He had by this point come up with his own
Speaker 1: idea for a startup called infogami. This was a kind
Speaker 1: of early social media application, but instead of centralizing users
Speaker 1: on a one controlled hub, it would allow users to
Speaker 1: make their own websites. Right. So, instead of you can
Speaker 1: create your own account on this site and share stuff
Speaker 1: like you do on Instagram or whatever on the site,
Speaker 1: you create your own website and it's your website. I'm
Speaker 1: just creating a centralized set of tools for you to
Speaker 1: build your own websites.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: Schwartz's instincts here show how different he is from a
Speaker 1: lot of the other tech genius types coming because they're
Speaker 1: all thinking, how can I create a walled garden and
Speaker 1: trap people there. That is not at all what he's
Speaker 1: thinking now, more of.
Speaker 2: A massimone guy than a Twitter guy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, definitely, at least ideologically. Now, that's not how
Speaker 1: this project's going to end up, because you know, he
Speaker 1: moves to Cambridge, Massachusetts, and he starts working on this
Speaker 1: project with pretty feverish intensity. While he's doing this, he's
Speaker 1: going to intermittently struggle with his illness. You know, this
Speaker 1: physical pain increasingly brings about bouts of depression that would
Speaker 1: render him unfunctional for weeks at a time. Still, on
Speaker 1: the day's Aaron could work again. He's able to accomplish
Speaker 1: so much work that it all kind of shakes out
Speaker 1: well in the long run. And eventually why Combinator pairs
Speaker 1: him with two other founders, para dudes named Steve Huffman
Speaker 1: and Alexis o'hanian, who were working on their own product Reddit,
Speaker 1: Serena Williams's husband, That's right, yes, Serena Williams's husband. So
Speaker 1: they are basically a lot of Aaron's ideas for Infogomi
Speaker 1: get folded into Reddit, and you know, Reddit kind of
Speaker 1: has started to exist, but it doesn't work it boogie,
Speaker 1: it's unstable. It can't be adopted on any meaningful scale
Speaker 1: because it's like, it's not good yet. Aaron comes in
Speaker 1: and he fixes all of the code, right, and so
Speaker 1: he becomes one of the founders of Reddit, which is,
Speaker 1: of all of the big modern social media sites, the
Speaker 1: closest to the old Internet. It still exists on the
Speaker 1: new one.
Speaker 2: And it's funny because reddithead this reputation of like being
Speaker 2: the incubator of bad ideas, but compared to everything that
Speaker 2: came after, Reddit's a little haven of like like when
Speaker 2: I want to look up a review of a product,
Speaker 2: I type thing and then read it, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and if I have a problem, a technical issue
Speaker 1: I need to fix something, like, I will find the
Speaker 1: answer on Reddit before I find it on Google these days, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, I use Google, but I type the question
Speaker 1: and Reddit on it exactly find useful shit like it is.
Speaker 1: It is, for all of its flaws, still one of
Speaker 1: the best things on the Internet. Yeah, so at this
Speaker 1: point he is he is helping to invent Reddit, He
Speaker 1: has helped to invent RSS, He has helped to invent
Speaker 1: the creative commons. Right, nineteen year old kid, you know,
Speaker 1: kind of verging on I think twenty. At this point,
Speaker 1: his contributions are undeniable. But for the other folks at Reddit,
Speaker 1: his co founders, he is becomes increasingly frustrating to work
Speaker 1: with because while when he's working he gets a lot done,
Speaker 1: I think in total he gets as much done as anyone.
Speaker 1: He has this habit of dropping out of contact for
Speaker 1: days or even like a week or so at a time,
Speaker 1: and like hiding in his apartment. And when he does it,
Speaker 1: he's just reading books NonStop generally, or he's in too
Speaker 1: much pain to do much, but he doesn't. He's not
Speaker 1: good at communicating with the team about this stuff.
Speaker 2: So, like, you know, that's it.
Speaker 1: I don't think the Reddit guys are wrong, Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: it was kind of a frustration that he would just
Speaker 1: get a drop out and that we wouldn't know why. Right.
Speaker 1: This is about the time he gets kind of disillusioned
Speaker 1: with coding. In a two thousand and six blog post,
Speaker 1: he describes writing as his desired purpose in life. The
Speaker 1: good news for Aaron is that later that year, Conde
Speaker 1: Nast bought Reddit for twelve million dollars, and Aaron receives
Speaker 1: an even chunk of the payout. We don't know how
Speaker 1: much he gets. He seems not to have told anyone
Speaker 1: specifically about it. Probably somewhere a million or north of
Speaker 1: a million, right. Yeah, it's enough money, especially back then,
Speaker 1: that he does not have to work. You know, he
Speaker 1: would eventually have to make more money. Right. You can't
Speaker 1: live generally, probably off your whole life, for your whole life,
Speaker 1: off a million dollars if you're young. Right, But that's
Speaker 1: enough money that he doesn't have to worry about money
Speaker 1: for quite a while, right. And it's also you know,
Speaker 1: I found this interesting New Yorker article that is kind
Speaker 1: of a more a bit of a more critical take
Speaker 1: on Aaron and his legacy than some of the others
Speaker 1: that talks spends a lot of time talking about how
Speaker 1: much he loves money, which I don't think is fair.
Speaker 1: It does quote him talking about, you know, making some
Speaker 1: kind of bratty statements about like, oh, you know, I
Speaker 1: lose that much money in my couch cushions or whatever,
Speaker 1: and talk about how cool it is to have like money,
Speaker 1: and it kind of makes the claim that like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: Aaron loved money, which is not borne out by the
Speaker 1: rest of his life. I think he just has a
Speaker 1: reaction that any nineteen or twenty year old when they
Speaker 1: suddenly have a million dollars, which is like, fuck, that's dope.
Speaker 1: I don't have to do a thing I don't want
Speaker 1: to do anymore sick, which I don't think is I
Speaker 1: don't think that's element evidence of him being shallow. Who
Speaker 1: wouldn't feel that way? Right?
Speaker 2: Also, like, when you live in capitalism, you're presented as
Speaker 2: if it is a video game with a point system,
Speaker 2: and the measurement of the point system is money. And
Speaker 2: if you are a kid and you believe that that
Speaker 2: makes sense, you got told that, you know. But yet
Speaker 2: he also was doing all of this work to specifically
Speaker 2: under like the fact that his hero is the person
Speaker 2: who didn't he didn't lock shit up, you know, like yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: His life past this point is not going to be
Speaker 1: defined by him seeking out money. Yeah right, Like that's
Speaker 1: ultimately what I'll make the decision based on. Yeah, Like,
Speaker 1: I'm sure he was fucking thrilled. Who wouldn't be, right, right, Like,
Speaker 1: that doesn't matter how much you hate capitalism. It's great
Speaker 1: to have enough money that you don't have to worry
Speaker 1: about money anymore. Yeah, totally, my parents knees. Yeah yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: so Kande asked, buys it. They move shit over to
Speaker 1: like San Francisco, which thinks where their offices are. He
Speaker 1: stays on for a while, right, they make him move
Speaker 1: back West to work out of the office, which he hates.
Speaker 1: He hates working, he hates the corporate environment. He justlkes
Speaker 1: San Francisco. You know, it's not his place. It's not
Speaker 1: his kind of lifestyle.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: He has a lot of issues adapting to this, not
Speaker 1: surprising based on the guy we've known so far. He
Speaker 1: meets a woman while he's in San Francisco. She becomes
Speaker 1: his girlfriend, a journalist named Quinn Norton. We will talk
Speaker 1: about Quinn Norton later. Controversial figure to say the least.
Speaker 1: She is a journalist who works with hackers. That's a
Speaker 1: lot of for reporting. She's also an anarchist. That's how
Speaker 1: she described. I don't know more about the tendency she
Speaker 1: subscribes to, but that's how she self describes. And by
Speaker 1: this point, according to Quinn, who is very close with him,
Speaker 1: at this period, he's growing dissolutioned with his work on Reddit. Quote.
Speaker 1: He wasn't sure if he had done a good thing.
Speaker 1: He began to see it as a way people wasted time.
Speaker 1: So he's got some issues with creating this thing that's
Speaker 1: one of the first kind of Web two point zero
Speaker 1: sort of foundations. This is also kind of going back
Speaker 1: and forth on This is part of what it's going
Speaker 1: to become. Another common pattern with Aaron, which is that
Speaker 1: he seems to regularly find himself racked with doubt over
Speaker 1: whether or not he'd accomplished anything of value in his life. Right.
Speaker 1: This is a regular thing for him where he's like,
Speaker 1: I don't think I've ever made anything. I think some
Speaker 1: of that's just because everything he makes is part of
Speaker 1: a team, right, And he's not going to be one
Speaker 1: of these guys like fucking Zucker. And that's true of
Speaker 1: all of these guys, by the way, all of these
Speaker 1: tech luminaries, none of them make anything on The closest
Speaker 1: you get is maybe Wosniak, right, who did legitimately sit
Speaker 1: down at a cobble together a personal computer. Right, But
Speaker 1: like none of these founders make anything on their own,
Speaker 1: you know, like that just simply doesn't happen, right, And
Speaker 1: like Aaron understands that. I think he feels kind of
Speaker 1: insecure about it. But like Aaron is everyone who was
Speaker 1: a part of these projects is like, yeah, he was
Speaker 1: a big part of them, he'd right, but.
Speaker 3: He didn't invent replace a web like his particular like right, yeah,
Speaker 3: Lessig is a guy who, yeah, just invented the world
Speaker 3: Wide Web, right, Yeah, you know Aaron seems to have
Speaker 3: kind of I don't think it's a constant thing for him,
Speaker 3: because he also has these periods like he can be
Speaker 3: a little braggy.
Speaker 1: I don't think in an unhealthy way, because he's accomplished
Speaker 1: a lot. I think it's just when he's sick, when
Speaker 1: he's hurting, when he's dealing with bouts of depression. This
Speaker 1: is a thing that comes up with him a lot,
Speaker 1: like I don't think I've ever made anything about you, right,
Speaker 1: it's irrational. That doesn't stop that, I mean, everyone from happening, right,
Speaker 1: right exactly, And maybe that can help you if you
Speaker 1: deal with imposter syndem knowing that, like yeah, this guy
Speaker 1: who literally no one can deny his contributions to science
Speaker 1: and technology felt that way too. So yeah, again, he's
Speaker 1: struggling increasingly during this period, and the fact that he
Speaker 1: has to work at this office, he's in a place
Speaker 1: he doesn't really want to be, contributes to that, and
Speaker 1: I'm going to quote from Rolling Stone again. That Christmas,
Speaker 1: two months after he'd started working in Redditt San Francisco office,
Speaker 1: Schwartz took a trip to Berlin to attend the Chaos
Speaker 1: Communication Congress, one of the most popular HA conventions in
Speaker 1: the world. On his way back home, he stopped in
Speaker 1: Cambridge for a visit when his lifelong stomach troubles asserted themselves,
Speaker 1: leaving him writing in pain for several days. On January eighteenth,
Speaker 1: two thousand and seven, he wrote a post on his
Speaker 1: blog titled A Moment Before Dying, which began there is
Speaker 1: a moment immediately before life becomes no longer worth living,
Speaker 1: when the world appears to slow down and all its
Speaker 1: myriad details suddenly become brightly, achingly apparent. Written as a
Speaker 1: short story in the third person, the post described a
Speaker 1: young man Erin, who had decided to kill himself for Erin,
Speaker 1: and this is him writing. That moment came after exactly
Speaker 1: one week of pain, seven days of searing, tormenting agony
Speaker 1: that poured forth from his belly. The post alarmed his
Speaker 1: Reddit partners. It was the first they had heard from
Speaker 1: him in weeks, and it appeared to be a suicide note. Ohanian,
Speaker 1: one of the original founders, called the local police department
Speaker 1: and officers were dispatched to the apartment. Just before they arrived,
Speaker 1: Schwartz snuck out this onto the street, and in the
Speaker 1: wake of the incident, went to links to downplay at severity,
Speaker 1: changing the original post from Erin to Alyx as if
Speaker 1: to make clear that suicide was not something the actual
Speaker 1: Erin would ever seriously consider. So that's, you know, shows
Speaker 1: you where his head is. That's worrying, right. I'm not
Speaker 1: surprised and was concerned by this. I mean, chronic illness
Speaker 1: is an It's a real motherfucker yeeah. Now, this plus
Speaker 1: the fact that he had not been showing up to
Speaker 1: work for long periods of time, is going to be
Speaker 1: what precipitates a pretty rapid resignation from Reddit, and in
Speaker 1: short order, Erin is a free agent again. His next
Speaker 1: project would be his most ambitious, The Open Library. Along
Speaker 1: with Brewster Kahl, Alexis Rosi, a, Nan Chappotu, and Rebecca Malamood,
Speaker 1: Aaron embarked on a project to collect online digital copies
Speaker 1: of every book imaginable. The idea is every book will
Speaker 1: have a page to the extent that's possible. The ones
Speaker 1: that are open source, that are old enough will have
Speaker 1: full scans of the book that you can like search
Speaker 1: and read. The books that we don't have access to
Speaker 1: will at least have, you know, ideally we'll get a
Speaker 1: copy or that people could check out online or something,
Speaker 1: but we'll at least have a page for it that
Speaker 1: explains who wrote it, what it is, what's in it.
Speaker 1: And the online library is still around today. It's one
Speaker 1: of the most significant storehouses of knowledge in the history
Speaker 1: of the human race. Right, Aaron is foundational in creating
Speaker 1: the open library. He's one of the people who helps
Speaker 1: to found it. He's only on that, I think for
Speaker 1: like a year, maybe a little less, and you know,
Speaker 1: he contributes significantly, and then he finds himself drawn in
Speaker 1: another direction and kind of bounces. Some of this is
Speaker 1: because he gets frustrated with the refusal of big libraries
Speaker 1: to share their catalogs. But as call, who's one of
Speaker 1: the founders, later told Rolling Stone, Aaron floated, that's how
Speaker 1: he worked, and you had to accept it. He didn't
Speaker 1: ask to get paid much. He really thought of himself
Speaker 1: as a volunteer for the world, and that is what
Speaker 1: he does. He'll come into these projects, he'll help with
Speaker 1: the founding vision, he'll help make them work, and then
Speaker 1: he's going to bounce you know, yea and move on
Speaker 1: to the next thing. That's just who he is. That's
Speaker 1: how his brain works, that's how he's functional, right, And
Speaker 1: you know calls atude is like, yeah, you know, it
Speaker 1: would have been nice to have him around for longer,
Speaker 1: but he did. He did his bit, and he moved on.
Speaker 1: And that's just Aaron. You just have to understand that.
Speaker 2: Well, you know that is.
Speaker 1: Longer, but yeah, he did his bit. So if you're
Speaker 1: keeping track, Aaron Schwartz, who is now at the start
Speaker 1: of his twenties, I think he's just now able to
Speaker 1: drink legally, has played a key role in developing RSS,
Speaker 1: in the creation of creative commons, in the creation of Reddit,
Speaker 1: and in the creation of the Open Library. Now, what's
Speaker 1: most amazing to me about this guy is that at
Speaker 1: this point he could have picked a lucrative job for
Speaker 1: himself literally anywhere in the tech industry. There is nowhere
Speaker 1: that would not have that wouldn't have paid so much.
Speaker 1: It hurt to get this guy right. He does not
Speaker 1: have any interest in that his heart continually pulls him
Speaker 1: towards projects that serve a social good and make knowledge
Speaker 1: accessible to as many people as possible. That's not specifically
Speaker 1: his goal his entire career, but that's he is right now.
Speaker 1: In two thousand and eight, Aarin attends a retreat by
Speaker 1: the EIFL, the Electronic Information for Libraries. It's a nonprofit
Speaker 1: that seeks to increase access to knowledge in developing economies
Speaker 1: around the world. The event, which is held at a
Speaker 1: former monastery in Italy, seems to have had a somewhat
Speaker 1: evangelical air to it. Erin is perhaps overtaken by the
Speaker 1: sense of techno optimism in the air, and it's not
Speaker 1: hard to see why. This was the tail end of
Speaker 1: the Bush years, this long period of neo con dominance
Speaker 1: that is eroding in the face of Barack Obama's presidential campaign,
Speaker 1: which is the most optimistic thing Americans had seen in
Speaker 1: politics in a generation. At least. Late in the event,
Speaker 1: Erin and an unknown number of co writers put together
Speaker 1: a document known as the Guerrilla Open Access Manifesto. A
Speaker 1: number of people contribute, it is unclear how many. It
Speaker 1: is unclear who they are. Erin's is the only name
Speaker 1: that winds up on the thing right, and it includes
Speaker 1: some pretty spicy lines. This is how it opens. Information
Speaker 1: is power, but like all power, there are those who
Speaker 1: want to keep it for themselves. The world's entire as
Speaker 1: scientific and cultural heritage, published over centuries and books and
Speaker 1: journals is increasingly being digitized and locked up by a
Speaker 1: handful of private corporations. Want to read the papers featuring
Speaker 1: the most famous results of the sciences, you'll need to
Speaker 1: send enormous amounts to publishers like read Elviser, and the
Speaker 1: document points out one of the things that's happening here
Speaker 1: is a lot of these publishers. The information in them
Speaker 1: is maybe in a lot of cases open source. It's
Speaker 1: publicly funded studies. But unless you're able to get to
Speaker 1: one of the libraries that has it, you have to
Speaker 1: pay to get access to the documents that it's You
Speaker 1: have to pay his service like jstore to get access
Speaker 1: to it. And Aaron's like, that's fucking bullshit. You know,
Speaker 1: like this is our information, and you know, obviously the
Speaker 1: other stuff I think should be shared too. The document
Speaker 1: points out that open access, if successful, would only ensure
Speaker 1: ongoing access for future publications, while the total of published
Speaker 1: work up to the point that open access becomes a
Speaker 1: thing would remain locked up. The document decries this as
Speaker 1: too high a price to pay, and then asks rhetorically,
Speaker 1: what can we do about this? Quote those with access
Speaker 1: to these resources, students, librarian, scientists, you have been given
Speaker 1: a privilege. You get to feed at this banquet of
Speaker 1: knowledge while the rest of the world is locked out.
Speaker 1: But you need not. Indeed, morally you cannot keep this
Speaker 1: privilege for yourselves. You have a duty to share it
Speaker 1: with the world, and you have trading passwords with colleagues,
Speaker 1: filling download requests for friends. So he is basically saying
Speaker 1: what people are already doing, have access to the stuff
Speaker 1: to their buddies, we need to do for the world.
Speaker 1: We need to do this to give access, particularly to
Speaker 1: people in the global South. You do not have the
Speaker 1: infrastructural access to this stuff in the same way that
Speaker 1: people can kind of wangle their way into getting it
Speaker 1: in the United States. In Europe. This is controversial among
Speaker 1: his colleagues at this conference. These are all people who
Speaker 1: believe in open access, but they are people who work
Speaker 1: within the system for legal nonprofit organizations. Aaron is saying
Speaker 1: some hackers here right what he is saying could be
Speaker 1: read as an incitement to illegal activity, which.
Speaker 2: Is good positive.
Speaker 1: I totally agree, yeah, that this is controversial among people
Speaker 1: who are like, we are working within the system and
Speaker 1: this we see this as potentially kind of dangerous right now,
Speaker 1: the fact that this is controversial among them, it's not
Speaker 1: wildly different in tone from a lot of hacker pros
Speaker 1: that has come out in the nineties and early two thousands.
Speaker 1: And you know, eventually, whatever hubbub there is from this
Speaker 1: kind of passes and life goes on for a while,
Speaker 1: and that's where we're going to end for part one
Speaker 1: of this episode. Magpie, how are you feeling?
Speaker 2: I feel great because I know that only positive things
Speaker 2: are coming in the future. And yep, I really the
Speaker 2: main thing that I know about is this open access
Speaker 2: stuff about arn Schwartz, and I as someone who also
Speaker 2: has never I've never had institutional access to this knowledge,
Speaker 2: and I do a lot of history research and things
Speaker 2: like that, so I've always been very appreciative of I
Speaker 2: don't know how to phrase this carefully. I like open access,
Speaker 2: That's what I'll say. And I think that it's an important,
Speaker 2: important thing like that. It is just actually true, and
Speaker 2: especially talking about it in terms of like how it
Speaker 2: impacts people in the global South, like where you can't like,
Speaker 2: you know, I don't go to a fancy college, but
Speaker 2: I know some people go to fancy colleges, and so
Speaker 2: I just am like, hey, what do you think about
Speaker 2: this one thing? You know?
Speaker 1: Yep. So well, that's the podcast. We'll be back next
Speaker 1: week for the conclusion.
Speaker 2: Oh about Santa Claus.
Speaker 1: All right, everybody, thanks for listening. We's done zo bye.
Speaker 1: Behind the Bastards is the production of cool Zone Media.
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