WEBVTT - Part One: Christmas Hero Episode: Aaron Swartz 0:00:01.720 --> 0:00:06.320 As media. Hey everybody, Robert here, it's the Christmas two parter, 0:00:06.680 --> 0:00:09.240 and every year we try to use our holiday episodes 0:00:09.400 --> 0:00:12.000 to do something good. This year, we're asking you to 0:00:12.039 --> 0:00:15.560 support the mutual aid project that James Stout over at 0:00:15.600 --> 0:00:17.560 It Could Happen Here, has been a part of for 0:00:17.640 --> 0:00:20.400 nearly six months in a remote part of the US 0:00:20.480 --> 0:00:25.360 Mexico border near Yacoomba, California. While you're hopefully warm and dry, 0:00:25.680 --> 0:00:28.920 the border patrol is detaining thousands of migrants, including children 0:00:28.960 --> 0:00:31.560 and the elderly, in the desert without food, water, or 0:00:31.600 --> 0:00:36.680 shelter when overnight temperatures drop below freezing. Volunteers provide hot meals, 0:00:36.680 --> 0:00:39.800 blankets and toys for children. They build shelters even though 0:00:39.800 --> 0:00:42.400 the Border Patrol destroys them, and keep rebuilding them so 0:00:42.440 --> 0:00:44.360 that people have a place to sleep out in the 0:00:44.400 --> 0:00:48.239 freezing wind. Everyone there, including James, has spent a lot 0:00:48.240 --> 0:00:50.479 of their own money supporting this effort, and you can 0:00:50.479 --> 0:00:53.559 hear more about the efforts of volunteers over on It 0:00:53.600 --> 0:00:56.320 Could Happen Here, But your support would mean the world 0:00:56.360 --> 0:00:58.920 to James and the other people trying to help migrants 0:00:59.000 --> 0:01:02.400 over at the border. Of course, those migrants themselves. You 0:01:02.440 --> 0:01:05.880 can donate to this effort at GoFundMe. If you just 0:01:05.959 --> 0:01:13.760 type Yakumba Jacumba Migrant Camps go fund me, Yakumba Migrant 0:01:13.760 --> 0:01:17.679 Camps go fund me, you'll get it. Or you can 0:01:17.800 --> 0:01:23.240 use the link TinyURL dot com slash border agfm that'll 0:01:23.280 --> 0:01:28.960 take you right to the fundraiser. So thank you. Ah 0:01:30.720 --> 0:01:34.840 what a happy Yule Tie Mary Xmas to all of 0:01:34.880 --> 0:01:39.280 you listeners out there in radio land. It's not radio land. 0:01:39.520 --> 0:01:43.120 Radio is a dead medium. It's a podcast Behind the 0:01:43.160 --> 0:01:46.399 Bastards where normally we talk about the very worst people 0:01:46.440 --> 0:01:50.160 in all of history, but once a year, one glorious 0:01:50.640 --> 0:01:53.800 day or week out of the year, instead of talking 0:01:53.840 --> 0:01:56.200 about the worst people in all of history, we talk 0:01:56.240 --> 0:01:58.440 about some of the best people in all of history. 0:01:59.280 --> 0:02:03.480 And today, as our guest on this This Yule Tide episode, 0:02:03.520 --> 0:02:07.960 our only returning Christmas episode, guest Margaret Killjoy, who talks 0:02:08.000 --> 0:02:10.800 about cool people who did cool stuff for a living 0:02:11.680 --> 0:02:12.880 in a podcast with that name. 0:02:13.040 --> 0:02:17.680 Hey, you only cover Santa Claus, right, Yeah, yeah. 0:02:17.520 --> 0:02:19.399 We're we're getting into the We're getting into the big 0:02:19.400 --> 0:02:25.000 Man himself. Okay, now, Magpie, how do you feel about Christmas? 0:02:25.240 --> 0:02:26.120 You Christmas person. 0:02:26.600 --> 0:02:30.440 I am. Now this is a recent transition. I decided 0:02:30.520 --> 0:02:33.840 that it makes sense that everyone wants together to celebrate 0:02:33.880 --> 0:02:37.840 the darkest time of the year. Yeah, and that whatever 0:02:38.639 --> 0:02:41.040 holiday people attached to it, as long as the core 0:02:41.080 --> 0:02:43.600 of it is get together with people that you care 0:02:43.639 --> 0:02:46.960 about as the dark set, the dark is here and 0:02:47.000 --> 0:02:48.600 the cold is coming. You know. 0:02:48.680 --> 0:02:51.480 Yeah, Yeah, I think that's a I tend to be 0:02:51.520 --> 0:02:54.600 more or less in agreement. I enjoy celebrating the holiday 0:02:54.800 --> 0:02:56.560 that has nothing to do with the guy we're talking 0:02:56.600 --> 0:03:02.200 about today, but it is. It is. Yeah, Santa Claus 0:03:04.320 --> 0:03:07.560 Are we've all gone through in the period from the 0:03:07.680 --> 0:03:12.280 early two thousands to today, this really interesting moment, especially 0:03:12.320 --> 0:03:13.440 those of us. This is kind of less of a 0:03:13.440 --> 0:03:15.519 case for people who have been radicals that entire time, 0:03:15.560 --> 0:03:18.919 but those of us who started from a more centrist, moderate, 0:03:19.240 --> 0:03:23.240 you know, liberal kind of background, this period of like, wow, 0:03:23.440 --> 0:03:25.800 you know, the internet is going to be this incredible 0:03:25.840 --> 0:03:30.399 tool for democracy and spreading knowledge. The tech industry they're 0:03:30.600 --> 0:03:33.880 they're like this progressive force in a lot of ways 0:03:33.919 --> 0:03:36.000 in society. There's a bunch of things that are going 0:03:36.040 --> 0:03:38.600 to be made better by connecting people all over the 0:03:38.640 --> 0:03:42.440 world to oh, not only does all this technology not 0:03:42.560 --> 0:03:44.240 work the way that we thought it, and not only 0:03:44.360 --> 0:03:45.840 is it a lot more toxic, does they have more 0:03:45.920 --> 0:03:50.400 negative consequences for people's mental health, for the health of societies, 0:03:50.880 --> 0:03:54.240 But it increases the arsenal of authoritarians. And most of 0:03:54.320 --> 0:03:58.200 the people who are running the tech industry now want 0:03:58.320 --> 0:04:01.720 that right, are fundamentally on the side of authoritarians. There's 0:04:01.760 --> 0:04:03.400 this kind of movement. The New York Times just did 0:04:03.440 --> 0:04:06.040 an article on it, because that kind of the mainstream 0:04:06.040 --> 0:04:08.800 is starting to be aware of some to an extent 0:04:08.920 --> 0:04:10.360 of which it kind of came out of some of 0:04:10.400 --> 0:04:15.120 the effective altruism stuff. That's that's the effective accelerationists, right 0:04:15.600 --> 0:04:18.240 e ff slash acc is kind of how toll be 0:04:18.240 --> 0:04:20.080 written a lot in the ideas like we need to 0:04:20.160 --> 0:04:25.039 accelerate without thinking of the consequences, you know, AI effective AI, 0:04:25.360 --> 0:04:28.480 you know, and push it in every aspect of society, 0:04:28.520 --> 0:04:30.719 and it doesn't matter who it hurts, it doesn't matter 0:04:30.800 --> 0:04:33.240 what the consequences are, because fundamentally this is what human 0:04:33.279 --> 0:04:36.040 beings need. And these people are also getting into eugenics. 0:04:36.080 --> 0:04:37.919 A lot of these are the folks around Elon Musk. 0:04:38.800 --> 0:04:42.599 It's deeply reactionary in many ways, but it came out 0:04:42.640 --> 0:04:44.320 of and a lot of some of the people who 0:04:44.360 --> 0:04:47.120 are involved in it are folks who came out of 0:04:47.320 --> 0:04:51.240 in the early two thousands, the late nineties. You would 0:04:51.240 --> 0:04:53.039 have thought a lot differently of them, right, You would 0:04:53.080 --> 0:04:55.120 have thought that these people were, if not on the 0:04:55.200 --> 0:04:58.600 side of angels, then broadly speaking, part of a positive 0:04:58.640 --> 0:05:02.119 trend in our culture. And today. The hero we're talking 0:05:02.160 --> 0:05:04.120 about is a guy who's a personal hero of mine. 0:05:04.839 --> 0:05:09.160 He was a dude who was to an extent on 0:05:09.360 --> 0:05:12.720 this side. But yeah, yeah, he was a dude who 0:05:12.920 --> 0:05:16.440 was to an extent on you know, we don't know 0:05:16.600 --> 0:05:19.080 because because of when he died, fundamentally where he would 0:05:19.080 --> 0:05:20.800 have ended up now, I don't think he would be 0:05:21.080 --> 0:05:23.880 in league with any of those guys. He's a guy 0:05:23.960 --> 0:05:26.800 a fundamentally view as a hero. And his name was 0:05:26.839 --> 0:05:27.600 Aaron Schwartz. 0:05:28.360 --> 0:05:30.279 Yeah, I'm so excited. 0:05:31.040 --> 0:05:37.240 Yeah spelled Swartz. Aaron Hillel Schwartz was born on November eighth, 0:05:37.440 --> 0:05:40.600 nineteen eighty six, in Highland Parks, Chicago. He was the 0:05:40.680 --> 0:05:44.400 eldest of three brothers and in general enjoyed about his 0:05:44.520 --> 0:05:46.760 privileged not bringing as you can have and still do 0:05:46.880 --> 0:05:49.240 something useful with your life, right, He's not born like 0:05:49.440 --> 0:05:51.920 into crazy money, because those people don't tend to do much. 0:05:52.120 --> 0:05:54.160 Right. There's not an emerald mine in the picture. 0:05:54.480 --> 0:05:57.120 Yeah, he's not an emerald miner. But his dad like 0:05:57.279 --> 0:06:00.560 founds a software firm. I don't think they're like hundreds 0:06:00.560 --> 0:06:02.200 of millions of job but I'm sure they have a 0:06:02.320 --> 0:06:05.080 million or more, you know, in assets. You know, most 0:06:05.120 --> 0:06:08.480 of the time that that he's around, they're doing very well. Right, 0:06:09.320 --> 0:06:11.360 And because his dad's the founder of a software firm, 0:06:11.400 --> 0:06:13.800 his dad's a huge nerd, clearly a very smart guy. 0:06:14.880 --> 0:06:17.760 And so from a very early age there are computers 0:06:18.000 --> 0:06:20.640 in the Schwartz house and eventually Aaron and all of 0:06:20.680 --> 0:06:23.919 his brothers he has two younger brothers, will have computers 0:06:24.040 --> 0:06:27.120 as kids in the early I mean in the late eighties, 0:06:27.160 --> 0:06:27.840 early nineties. 0:06:27.960 --> 0:06:32.320 That's very rare, right, I grew up My dad was 0:06:32.320 --> 0:06:33.320 a very early adopter. 0:06:33.600 --> 0:06:34.160 Yeah, it was. 0:06:34.839 --> 0:06:37.600 So we had computers in the eighties, and like they were, 0:06:38.240 --> 0:06:40.920 they cost like all of my dad's money, you know. 0:06:41.240 --> 0:06:44.320 Yeah, you know, I was born late enough in the eighties. 0:06:44.400 --> 0:06:46.479 We certainly if we had a computer in the late ages, 0:06:46.480 --> 0:06:48.679 I don't think we did, but in the early nineties 0:06:48.800 --> 0:06:50.560 we had like we had one of the ones that 0:06:50.800 --> 0:06:53.800 like was pre floppy discs, whatever those giant ones were, 0:06:53.920 --> 0:06:55.440 and like, you know, all it has you just get 0:06:55.520 --> 0:06:57.280 green text on a little screen. Like we had one 0:06:57.279 --> 0:06:58.040 of those for a while. 0:06:58.880 --> 0:07:01.200 I would say it's probably pre hard to sorry, never mind, 0:07:01.200 --> 0:07:04.200 I don't need to my Yeah, we had all the 0:07:04.320 --> 0:07:06.440 Like my dad referred to it as a compact luggable. 0:07:06.480 --> 0:07:08.720 It's the size of a briefcase and it has a 0:07:08.800 --> 0:07:09.840 little green screen. 0:07:10.120 --> 0:07:11.120 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. 0:07:11.120 --> 0:07:13.200 It does have a hard drive. It has that. It 0:07:13.280 --> 0:07:15.200 has an A in a B drive, but not a 0:07:15.280 --> 0:07:16.280 C drive, you know. 0:07:17.080 --> 0:07:21.720 Yeah, ancient technology. Yeah, like not only does your phone 0:07:21.840 --> 0:07:24.360 have more computing power than I don't know may have 0:07:24.440 --> 0:07:26.600 existed in the country at that point. I don't fully 0:07:26.720 --> 0:07:29.760 know the answer to that, but like like fucking your 0:07:30.200 --> 0:07:31.960 refrigerators have more power than. 0:07:31.920 --> 0:07:35.720 Those machines did, right, Yeah, but I learned Q basic 0:07:35.800 --> 0:07:36.000 on it. 0:07:36.480 --> 0:07:39.280 Yeah, So Aaron, by the time he's like three's he's 0:07:39.440 --> 0:07:42.440 using a computer, you know. And and by the time 0:07:42.520 --> 0:07:45.320 he's three or four, you know, he's he's starting to 0:07:45.480 --> 0:07:48.400 like understand how to actually like make stuff on it, 0:07:48.680 --> 0:07:51.360 Like from a very young age six or seven, when 0:07:51.360 --> 0:07:54.440 their home is wired for internet access. Again, you're talking 0:07:54.520 --> 0:07:56.720 like ninety two. They're among the very first people to 0:07:56.800 --> 0:07:59.320 have home internet access. That is extremely uncommon in the 0:07:59.360 --> 0:08:03.200 early nineties. If you followed our stories of tech billionaires 0:08:03.240 --> 0:08:05.120 guys like Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos, or you've done 0:08:05.120 --> 0:08:07.280 your own reading on Steve Jobs. We haven't covered yet. 0:08:07.360 --> 0:08:09.480 We will one of these days. I definitely do consider 0:08:09.560 --> 0:08:12.000 him a bastard, although I have kind of more admiration 0:08:12.200 --> 0:08:15.120 for him as a in terms of just his capabilities 0:08:15.280 --> 0:08:17.680 than those other guys. He is a terrible person, don't 0:08:17.680 --> 0:08:19.240 get me wrong, right, but. 0:08:19.320 --> 0:08:22.120 In a world of mosques, he stands out like he 0:08:22.240 --> 0:08:24.560 did some stuff, right, Yeah. 0:08:25.120 --> 0:08:29.760 Yeah. If you are familiar with those guys, you'll recognize 0:08:29.800 --> 0:08:32.160 that Aaron has a pretty similar upbringing. They all do 0:08:32.360 --> 0:08:34.440 come from that kind of background. They're kind of upper 0:08:34.480 --> 0:08:37.840 middle class, but they're not super rich, right, But they 0:08:37.880 --> 0:08:39.959 are a lot have a lot more money than most people. 0:08:40.400 --> 0:08:42.240 They have parents who, if their parents are not tech 0:08:42.280 --> 0:08:45.240 nerds themselves, understand the value of computers and get their 0:08:45.320 --> 0:08:48.280 kids access to those at a very early age. Right. 0:08:48.679 --> 0:08:52.160 All of these things, he has the same background as 0:08:52.280 --> 0:08:56.480 most of our big tech founders do today. Right, broadly speaking, 0:08:56.640 --> 0:08:59.040 you know, he's gonna wind up being a very different person, 0:08:59.120 --> 0:09:01.680 but he does come from kind of the same starting position. 0:09:02.160 --> 0:09:04.480 One of the real differences with him. All of these 0:09:04.520 --> 0:09:07.160 guys get kind of framed as and I think probably 0:09:07.240 --> 0:09:11.120 believe of themselves as child geniuses. None of them were. 0:09:11.360 --> 0:09:13.880 They're all smart, don't get me wrong. Jeff Bezos, smart guy, 0:09:13.960 --> 0:09:17.839 Bill Gates, smart guy, Steve Jobs, smart guy. None of 0:09:17.880 --> 0:09:20.959 them are are geniuses, right, Steve Wozniak, I think, you know, 0:09:21.440 --> 0:09:24.120 very fair to call that man a technical genius, like 0:09:24.320 --> 0:09:27.760 one once in a generation brain. None of these guys 0:09:27.800 --> 0:09:31.160 are technical geniuses. They're pretty smart. They're pretty smart, and 0:09:31.240 --> 0:09:33.560 they have enough insight to understand where things are going 0:09:33.600 --> 0:09:35.559 to go to take advantage of people who are geniuses. 0:09:36.160 --> 0:09:38.760 Aaron is a legitimate child genius. There is there is 0:09:38.880 --> 0:09:41.840 no argument with that statement that I have ever seen. 0:09:43.000 --> 0:09:45.839 He is, like, for an idea of how intelligent he 0:09:45.960 --> 0:09:49.000 he is, he teaches himself to read and his parents 0:09:49.080 --> 0:09:51.480 don't realize has done it. His mom realizes it when 0:09:51.840 --> 0:09:54.199 they have a sign on the fridge that's like cliped 0:09:54.200 --> 0:09:56.079 out of the newspaper that's like there's you know, a 0:09:56.240 --> 0:10:00.040 free family entertainment you know thing nearby, and he he 0:10:00.040 --> 0:10:01.839 asked his mom, hey, mom, what is and he like 0:10:02.080 --> 0:10:03.640 reads the thing out and she's like, what are you 0:10:03.679 --> 0:10:05.840 talking about? And he points the fridge and she realizes 0:10:05.920 --> 0:10:08.360 that he's reading it. At age three, she has no 0:10:08.480 --> 0:10:10.640 idea that he's he's learned her This is how she 0:10:10.760 --> 0:10:13.600 learns that he knows how to read. Yes, he's reading 0:10:13.679 --> 0:10:17.200 novels by the time he's in kindergarten, and likewise, around 0:10:17.280 --> 0:10:19.360 the same time he teaches himself to read. A little 0:10:19.360 --> 0:10:22.920 bit later, he teaches himself to code. You know, just 0:10:23.480 --> 0:10:27.280 a phenomenal mind by again, have never heard any sort 0:10:27.280 --> 0:10:31.120 of debate on this question. Yeah, so obviously with the 0:10:31.200 --> 0:10:34.719 resources they have. Realizing how fucking smart their kid is, 0:10:34.840 --> 0:10:36.800 his parents decide to send him to a private school 0:10:36.840 --> 0:10:40.400 for gifted children, which he attends through middle school. He 0:10:40.520 --> 0:10:43.320 teaches himself to program pretty early on. His first project 0:10:43.440 --> 0:10:46.280 is a Sudoku like puzzle game. At one point, just 0:10:46.360 --> 0:10:50.240 as like a thing for fun, he builds and programs 0:10:50.280 --> 0:10:53.240 an ATM machine like out of cardboard, and like, I 0:10:53.280 --> 0:10:54.679 don't know what he uses for the computer but he 0:10:54.760 --> 0:10:56.840 gets access to some computer bits he like makes an 0:10:56.880 --> 0:10:57.760 ATM machine. 0:10:58.000 --> 0:10:58.520 Hell yeah. 0:10:59.360 --> 0:11:02.600 And he realized early on that with code, he can 0:11:02.760 --> 0:11:05.760 make things that not only do adults not understand, but 0:11:05.880 --> 0:11:08.160 like seem like magic to most of the adults around 0:11:08.160 --> 0:11:09.880 not his dad. His dad knows how to code, obviously, 0:11:10.000 --> 0:11:13.040 but to most adults. And a side consequence of this 0:11:13.240 --> 0:11:15.920 is that from his early days, you know he's not 0:11:16.120 --> 0:11:18.920 I'm sure you and I, like, I was a precocious kid. 0:11:19.000 --> 0:11:21.200 I started reading by the time I wasn't first grade. 0:11:21.240 --> 0:11:23.480 I was reading novels. You know, I was reading adult 0:11:23.520 --> 0:11:26.240 novels when I was in third grade. I read faster 0:11:26.440 --> 0:11:29.000 and got onto that stuff faster than most people. But 0:11:29.720 --> 0:11:31.880 that's the kind of thing. All of the adults around 0:11:31.920 --> 0:11:34.120 me my family are big readers. I saw them reading 0:11:34.160 --> 0:11:36.120 big books and bigger books than me. So like I 0:11:36.440 --> 0:11:37.679 was doing a thing, I'm like, oh, I'm doing a 0:11:37.720 --> 0:11:40.040 thing that's kind of like the adults, but they are 0:11:40.200 --> 0:11:43.000 still doing that thing, and they're doing it better. Aaron 0:11:43.160 --> 0:11:45.600 is doing a thing adults can't comprehend. Most adults can't 0:11:45.640 --> 0:11:48.079 comprehend coding, especially not on a level he is at. 0:11:48.640 --> 0:11:51.240 And you know that gives him a healthy respect for 0:11:51.360 --> 0:11:53.480 his own intellect, and sometimes it gives him kind of 0:11:53.600 --> 0:11:56.600 an unhealthy respect for his own end. And his younger 0:11:56.679 --> 0:11:59.680 brother has said, like he was kind of a brat, right, Yeah, 0:12:00.000 --> 0:12:01.679 he was smarter than most people. He knew he was 0:12:01.720 --> 0:12:03.680 smarter than most of the adults around, and he could 0:12:03.679 --> 0:12:06.520 be a snotty rat about it, right, Like, that's pretty 0:12:06.559 --> 0:12:08.839 inevitable when you've got a kid who's this smart, they're 0:12:08.880 --> 0:12:10.760 going to go through that. It seems to have been 0:12:10.800 --> 0:12:12.560 a phase for him. This is not, like, I don't 0:12:12.559 --> 0:12:15.240 think a lifelong thing for him. Most people say he 0:12:15.360 --> 0:12:17.480 was a very down to earth guy most of his life, 0:12:17.520 --> 0:12:19.719 but he has his brat period. I think that's kind 0:12:19.760 --> 0:12:22.719 of inevitable when you're this smart. His parents were part 0:12:22.760 --> 0:12:26.040 of a reform synagogue, but when he was pretty young, 0:12:26.520 --> 0:12:29.240 their dad moved them to a HBBAD synagogue, which is 0:12:29.320 --> 0:12:33.520 a kind of Orthodox synagogue. Fairly early on, but they're 0:12:33.559 --> 0:12:37.840 not you know, Aaron doesn't find himself compelled by organized religion, 0:12:37.960 --> 0:12:39.839 and when he's pretty young he tells his parents I 0:12:39.880 --> 0:12:42.120 don't believe in God, and they let him drop out. Right. 0:12:42.200 --> 0:12:44.440 They don't seem to have fought him on this right, 0:12:45.600 --> 0:12:48.880 not longer. Not long after that, when after he finishes 0:12:48.920 --> 0:12:51.640 the eighth grade, he's like, hey, I don't want to 0:12:51.760 --> 0:12:53.520 keep going to high school. I want to drop out. 0:12:53.559 --> 0:12:55.719 So he drops out of the ninth grade, and his 0:12:55.840 --> 0:12:58.360 dad lets him do this because he's like, yeah, I 0:12:58.400 --> 0:13:01.040 actually I hated high school too. I got bullied. Aaron 0:13:01.080 --> 0:13:03.800 gets bullied. He's he's mostly thin, but he's kind of 0:13:03.840 --> 0:13:06.480 like pudgy around the middle. He has some body image issues, 0:13:06.600 --> 0:13:09.480 and he's like, he's too smart. Any kid who's that smart, 0:13:09.480 --> 0:13:11.920 it's kind of get bullied. Right. He's a little bitty 0:13:12.080 --> 0:13:13.880 and he's weird. He's going to get bullied, you know. 0:13:14.440 --> 0:13:17.280 It's also inevitable. And he's like, I don't want to 0:13:17.400 --> 0:13:19.319 keep going to high school. I don't think I need this. 0:13:19.480 --> 0:13:21.439 So his dad he gets to drop out and he 0:13:21.520 --> 0:13:24.880 starts taking college courses at a nearby college. And Aaron 0:13:24.960 --> 0:13:26.559 is as good as his word. He is the kind 0:13:26.600 --> 0:13:28.880 of autodidact who has a he's got a wide ranging 0:13:29.120 --> 0:13:31.600 series of interests, and he's good at teaching himself things, 0:13:32.000 --> 0:13:34.520 and unlike a lot of tech wunderkins, he's not just 0:13:34.679 --> 0:13:37.040 obsessed with code. That's kind of his first love. But 0:13:37.160 --> 0:13:40.200 it's honestly, it's right up there with books. He would 0:13:40.240 --> 0:13:42.440 he would read kind of as a young adult, upwards 0:13:42.440 --> 0:13:45.439 of one hundred books a year, and he very quickly 0:13:45.480 --> 0:13:48.320 gets interested in novels by guys like George Saunders, David 0:13:48.400 --> 0:13:50.240 Foster Wallace. These are kind of like some of his 0:13:50.400 --> 0:13:53.680 favorites where he comes up short. He's good at teaching 0:13:53.760 --> 0:13:56.839 himself anything he's interested in. One of the problems he's 0:13:56.840 --> 0:13:58.559 going to have that's kind of a lifelong thing for him, 0:13:58.559 --> 0:14:00.800 is he can't focus on anything that's not really his 0:14:00.920 --> 0:14:03.680 top obsession at the moment. Right. He doesn't have generally 0:14:04.240 --> 0:14:07.280 to kind of long term stay interested in a specific thing. 0:14:07.840 --> 0:14:10.480 He doesn't have a lot of discipline, right, And that 0:14:10.679 --> 0:14:12.880 lack of discipline is kind of married with a basic 0:14:13.000 --> 0:14:15.760 lack of social skills. That again, very much what you'd 0:14:15.800 --> 0:14:17.720 expect from a kid whose parents let him drop out 0:14:17.760 --> 0:14:20.240 of school to raise himself on the internet. One of 0:14:20.280 --> 0:14:23.000 his childhood friends told an interviewer he needed a couple 0:14:23.040 --> 0:14:24.800 of years to be stuffed in a locker to get 0:14:24.800 --> 0:14:27.800 his social stuff together. And I think his friends being 0:14:27.840 --> 0:14:30.160 a little bit, you know, a facetious there, but I 0:14:30.200 --> 0:14:32.320 think the point is that it's not that being bullied 0:14:32.400 --> 0:14:35.480 is good, but the friction. Experiencing friction and having to 0:14:35.680 --> 0:14:38.360 work through it with your peers is good. That is necessary. Right, 0:14:38.360 --> 0:14:40.360 You don't need to get beaten the shit out of you, 0:14:40.800 --> 0:14:43.200 but you do need friction. You need to You need 0:14:43.240 --> 0:14:44.760 to be in situations where like, well I don't like 0:14:44.840 --> 0:14:46.720 the people here, but we have to accomplish a thing together. 0:14:46.840 --> 0:14:49.200 That's necessary. You know, I'm optimal health. 0:14:49.320 --> 0:14:51.560 I think I'm very glad I went to public school. 0:14:51.680 --> 0:14:52.560 Yeah, same here, you know. 0:14:52.800 --> 0:14:55.240 Like even though yeah, like middle school was a hell 0:14:55.360 --> 0:14:58.120 nightmare that I mostly disassociated the entire time. 0:14:58.200 --> 0:15:01.800 Yeah, yeah, I didn't like. But I think it's broadly speaking, 0:15:01.880 --> 0:15:04.200 there's there's things you get out of that that are necessary, 0:15:04.520 --> 0:15:06.240 and Aaron's not going to get some of that stuff. 0:15:06.320 --> 0:15:08.720 This is something that his family's kind of remarked on sense, 0:15:09.160 --> 0:15:12.720 So I'm not like, I'm not making this judgment on them. 0:15:12.760 --> 0:15:14.600 This is like based on stuff as family members of sex. 0:15:14.720 --> 0:15:15.760 Right, he did not have. 0:15:16.040 --> 0:15:18.440 You know, he has a voracious appetite for knowledge when 0:15:18.440 --> 0:15:21.560 he doesn't have as an appetite for like actual food. Right, 0:15:21.680 --> 0:15:25.520 he is a famously picky eater. He preferred white and 0:15:25.680 --> 0:15:29.000 I think yellow foods and kind of he hated He's 0:15:29.040 --> 0:15:31.120 the opposite of Steve Jobs. He hated fruit. He like 0:15:31.200 --> 0:15:35.200 wouldn't eat fruit basically, and he pretty much didn't eat 0:15:35.280 --> 0:15:38.880 vegetables other than fried potatoes because basically one hundred percent 0:15:38.920 --> 0:15:41.360 of people will eat fried potatoes, right, Yeah, no, there's 0:15:41.440 --> 0:15:43.520 no Yeah, yeah, I don't know that I've ever met 0:15:43.520 --> 0:15:46.880 anyone who won't eat French fries. Yea, so for health 0:15:46.920 --> 0:15:49.080 reasons obviously, but like, I don't know any all the 0:15:49.120 --> 0:15:51.080 picky eaters. I note, like fries tend to be a 0:15:51.120 --> 0:15:52.880 thing there. I don't know. I'm sure there are people 0:15:52.920 --> 0:15:55.520 who don't, but that is like weird how many people 0:15:55.560 --> 0:15:56.920 are like, yeah, but I'll eat fries. 0:15:57.360 --> 0:16:02.240 Yeah, Like fried carbohydrates are tasty and were most people 0:16:02.360 --> 0:16:04.240 are hardwired to understand that. 0:16:04.520 --> 0:16:06.960 Yeah, yeah, it's the like you the I don't know, 0:16:07.080 --> 0:16:10.560 this is a tangent, but like when when Europeans realized 0:16:10.720 --> 0:16:12.880 there were potatoes and what you could do with them, 0:16:12.920 --> 0:16:15.320 there was the sudden like, oh my god, this is 0:16:15.360 --> 0:16:17.920 what we've been saying. This is the real gold of 0:16:18.000 --> 0:16:20.000 El Dorado is fucking potatoes. 0:16:20.400 --> 0:16:25.760 Totally. Yeah, it's hard it's still hard to imagine Europe 0:16:25.800 --> 0:16:27.600 without corn, tomatoes or potatoes. 0:16:28.040 --> 0:16:33.280 Yeah, like it's it is, it is, Yeah, turnips and 0:16:34.960 --> 0:16:38.280 I don't know, drinking yourself into an early grave. So 0:16:39.000 --> 0:16:42.080 Aarin obviously he benefits from having a dad who's technically inclined. 0:16:42.480 --> 0:16:45.040 The two talked regularly about what the Internet was likely 0:16:45.120 --> 0:16:47.440 to mean for the future. His dad later said, we 0:16:47.520 --> 0:16:49.600 were going online when the web was really in its infancy, 0:16:49.680 --> 0:16:52.600 before there were graphical browsers, and very quickly we both 0:16:52.640 --> 0:16:54.880 realized that this was something that was going to change everything. 0:16:55.760 --> 0:16:58.160 A number of people came to that realization, and many 0:16:58.200 --> 0:17:00.520 of them went on to monetize the Internet in ways 0:17:00.560 --> 0:17:03.880 that have contributed to a great deal of harm. Aaron's 0:17:03.920 --> 0:17:05.840 interests from the beginning had a lot less to do 0:17:05.920 --> 0:17:07.720 with money and a lot to do with the sharing 0:17:07.800 --> 0:17:10.800 of information. In nineteen ninety nine, at age twelve, he 0:17:10.920 --> 0:17:15.840 created the Info Network, a user generated encyclopedia. Wikipedia didn't 0:17:15.920 --> 0:17:18.960 launch until two years later, a fact that always seemed 0:17:18.960 --> 0:17:22.800 to so again when he's twelve, he creates Wikipedia right like, 0:17:23.320 --> 0:17:26.400 with the same basic idea. It doesn't take off Wikipedia does, 0:17:26.800 --> 0:17:28.680 and that fact kind of you get the feeling it 0:17:28.800 --> 0:17:31.000 kind of peeves him a little bit, he would later 0:17:31.080 --> 0:17:34.120 tell an interviewer. It was basically Wikipedia, except long before 0:17:34.160 --> 0:17:36.320 Wikipedia had launched. But I was in middle school at 0:17:36.359 --> 0:17:38.040 the time, so my site didn't make it into the 0:17:38.080 --> 0:17:41.840 New York Times. And that's kind of and he's probably right, right, yeah, Now, 0:17:41.960 --> 0:17:45.240 totally Wipedia got the early you know interest And that's why. 0:17:45.160 --> 0:17:46.960 I says something that was in the air I guess, 0:17:47.080 --> 0:17:48.320 you know, yeah, which is. 0:17:48.359 --> 0:17:50.119 Nothing against the wikipedi. I don't. I'm not saying the 0:17:50.119 --> 0:17:53.000 Wikipedia people ripped Erin's ripped off a twelve year old, 0:17:53.359 --> 0:17:55.399 but it shows you. It shows you not just how 0:17:55.440 --> 0:17:58.040 smart he is, but like where his mind is going 0:17:58.240 --> 0:18:00.359 in terms of what people can get out of the 0:18:00.440 --> 0:18:02.440 Internet and should get out of the Internet. Right, And 0:18:03.040 --> 0:18:05.520 you know, Wikipedia, not that there aren't some critiques of it, 0:18:05.640 --> 0:18:08.480 but like one of the very best things the Internet's 0:18:08.520 --> 0:18:10.960 ever produced, one of the most important and useful things 0:18:11.000 --> 0:18:11.760 the Internet's ever. 0:18:11.720 --> 0:18:16.280 Made, and one of the only artifacts from this time, 0:18:16.640 --> 0:18:19.320 the time when the Internet was going to make us 0:18:19.440 --> 0:18:21.120 more free instead of less free. 0:18:22.119 --> 0:18:23.760 Yes, and one of the only ones that has not, 0:18:23.960 --> 0:18:26.439 I don't think in any meaningful sense, because like Google 0:18:26.640 --> 0:18:28.920 is was at one point, a pretty wonderful tool and 0:18:29.040 --> 0:18:31.760 has been deeply corrupted and polluted. I don't feel like 0:18:31.800 --> 0:18:37.440 Wikipedia has I'm very pro Wikipedia. Again, there's issues with it, 0:18:37.720 --> 0:18:40.960 you know, that's a separate topic, but pretty wonderful contribution. 0:18:41.800 --> 0:18:45.840 So anyway, you know, the fact this errands Wikipedia does 0:18:45.920 --> 0:18:48.159 not take off, but it does earn him a significant 0:18:48.200 --> 0:18:51.240 degree of early recognition. He became a finalist for the 0:18:51.400 --> 0:18:54.640 rs Digital Prize, which recognized young people who built valuable 0:18:54.800 --> 0:18:58.159 non commercial websites. He wins a thousand bucks for this, 0:18:58.359 --> 0:19:00.600 and he wins a trip to MIT, where for the 0:19:00.640 --> 0:19:03.040 first time he meets some of the genius coders and 0:19:03.240 --> 0:19:06.920 engineers he admired in person. Now, Aaron had already started 0:19:06.960 --> 0:19:09.840 communicating online with some of the luminaries in his field, 0:19:09.960 --> 0:19:13.480 but meeting guys like Philip Greenspun, who developed one of 0:19:13.560 --> 0:19:15.720 the very first photo sharing sites and is kind of 0:19:15.760 --> 0:19:18.320 he's a pioneer in the concept of how digital communities 0:19:18.320 --> 0:19:20.840 are going to work. He's he's a guy who is thinking, 0:19:20.960 --> 0:19:23.520 lays a lot of the groundwork for what becomes social media. 0:19:23.720 --> 0:19:27.800 You know, Aaron has his first conversations with this guy 0:19:27.960 --> 0:19:30.680 about the open source movement, which is popular among the 0:19:30.760 --> 0:19:34.040 nerds who are still the center of gravity in online technology, 0:19:34.480 --> 0:19:38.120 and he becomes entranced. He decides he wants to join 0:19:38.320 --> 0:19:42.400 the World Wide Web Consortium today it's the main international 0:19:42.480 --> 0:19:46.960 standards organization for the Internet, and he has turned down 0:19:47.520 --> 0:19:50.080 for joining because he's thirteen years old, Right, you know, 0:19:50.160 --> 0:19:51.920 they're like, well, we don't we don't let you know, 0:19:52.200 --> 0:19:54.200 this is like, yeah, we don't let their dan the 0:19:54.280 --> 0:19:56.119 yarrel's in. I don't think they're trying to be shitty, 0:19:56.119 --> 0:19:58.479 they're just yeah, it's a sensible rule for a kid 0:19:58.520 --> 0:20:02.800 who's not Aaron. Aaron refuses to take no for an answer, 0:20:02.920 --> 0:20:04.159 and I'm going to quote from a write up in 0:20:04.200 --> 0:20:07.000 The New Yorker here. Undaunted, he read through the rules 0:20:07.000 --> 0:20:09.040 of the Consortium and found that every member was allowed 0:20:09.080 --> 0:20:11.119 to send a delegate. He looked through the lists to 0:20:11.160 --> 0:20:13.560 find somebody who hadn't sent a delegate, and he found one, 0:20:13.800 --> 0:20:16.920 the HTML Writer's Guild. He emailed the group and asked 0:20:16.920 --> 0:20:19.240 if he could participate in a W three C work 0:20:19.280 --> 0:20:22.240 group as its delegate, and it had no objection. So 0:20:22.920 --> 0:20:25.080 he kind of finds a sideways way in. Right, he 0:20:25.160 --> 0:20:27.040 hears there's a rule against this. He finds a way 0:20:27.080 --> 0:20:28.879 around it. You know, this is going to be a 0:20:29.000 --> 0:20:32.280 pattern in his life. This willingness, first off, an unwillingness 0:20:32.359 --> 0:20:35.480 to take no for an answer he doesn't think there's 0:20:35.480 --> 0:20:38.320 a good reason for it, and second an unwillingness to 0:20:38.359 --> 0:20:40.640 listen to rules that he thinks are stupid. Right, that's 0:20:40.720 --> 0:20:44.240 going to characterize a lot of his future. Another thing 0:20:44.320 --> 0:20:46.439 that's going to characterize his life from this point forward 0:20:46.560 --> 0:20:49.680 is an understanding that unpleasant aspects of life, specifically the 0:20:49.760 --> 0:20:52.159 bureaucracies that we all have to engage in to some 0:20:52.320 --> 0:20:56.000 extent to survive, can be avoided. Right, And this is 0:20:56.040 --> 0:20:58.399 the thing that has positive and negative outcomes for him. Right. 0:20:58.520 --> 0:21:01.159 His dad's going to later trace the attitude back to 0:21:01.240 --> 0:21:03.440 his upbringing and the decision he made to let Aaron 0:21:03.520 --> 0:21:06.720 drop out of school. Quote, this is his father. He 0:21:06.800 --> 0:21:08.840 also never learned to do anything that he didn't want 0:21:08.880 --> 0:21:11.080 to do. College is very important that you're forced to 0:21:11.119 --> 0:21:13.200 study stuff you're not interested in. But he hated the 0:21:13.200 --> 0:21:15.960 bureaucracy of it, the dumb rules, the pointless assignments. He 0:21:16.080 --> 0:21:18.640 just rejected that. It was like getting him to eat vegetables. 0:21:19.760 --> 0:21:24.480 I wonder how much this is like father self blaming, 0:21:24.960 --> 0:21:27.840 not to spoil anyone who has that. I only know 0:21:27.920 --> 0:21:30.200 the like Cliff Snows. Yeah, of this man's story, I 0:21:30.680 --> 0:21:32.680 think it makes it based on his life. 0:21:32.960 --> 0:21:36.040 I think he's probably kind of accurately describing his son. Right. 0:21:36.119 --> 0:21:36.320 Yeah. 0:21:36.320 --> 0:21:38.960 This isn't a big track because Aaron accomplishes, spoiler a 0:21:39.080 --> 0:21:42.480 lot of shit in the time that he's around. But 0:21:42.560 --> 0:21:44.359 I think this is fair. He does not. He is 0:21:44.440 --> 0:21:47.080 someone who's who's rarely going to stick with a project 0:21:47.119 --> 0:21:49.159 for very long. And I think it is because and 0:21:49.240 --> 0:21:51.800 he's also someone who he kind of freezes up when 0:21:51.800 --> 0:21:53.080 he is sort of confronted with a lot of the 0:21:53.160 --> 0:21:56.520 realities bureaucracy because he just doesn't have to. He's most 0:21:56.560 --> 0:21:58.680 of his life able to get away from it, right. Yeah, 0:21:59.000 --> 0:22:03.879 And again there's a lot of value in understanding. I 0:22:04.000 --> 0:22:05.840 run into this with some of my friends who kind 0:22:05.840 --> 0:22:07.679 of were more on the anarchist punk side of thing. 0:22:07.760 --> 0:22:09.720 When when you have to deal with the legal system 0:22:09.840 --> 0:22:11.720 and stuff, because I've had a lot more dealings with 0:22:11.800 --> 0:22:14.440 it where it's like there's just ways that you have 0:22:14.600 --> 0:22:16.200 to approach it to deal with it. It's the same 0:22:16.240 --> 0:22:19.119 thing with talking to when when my close friends or 0:22:19.200 --> 0:22:22.800 whatever have an issue with like a company they need 0:22:22.880 --> 0:22:25.000 to get like a refund or something. I know how 0:22:25.080 --> 0:22:28.280 to talk to representatives and shit to make things happen, right, 0:22:28.359 --> 0:22:30.080 I just I have learned that shit over the years. 0:22:30.119 --> 0:22:30.600 It's a skill. 0:22:30.600 --> 0:22:32.800 Well, it's like when cops are messing with you and 0:22:32.920 --> 0:22:35.159 you have to like you have to shut the fuck up, 0:22:35.280 --> 0:22:37.040 but you have to do it politely and respectfully. 0:22:37.720 --> 0:22:37.920 Yeah. 0:22:38.280 --> 0:22:42.159 You know, like there are ways to navigate every system 0:22:42.240 --> 0:22:45.080 of power, and often the smartest thing to do is 0:22:45.160 --> 0:22:48.080 to navigate it rather than just fight every aspect of 0:22:48.160 --> 0:22:48.840 it every turn. 0:22:49.440 --> 0:22:51.680 Yeah. There's this moment during early on in the protests 0:22:51.680 --> 0:22:53.920 in Portland where you know, we were filming some people 0:22:53.960 --> 0:22:56.720 getting arrested and the police said that they were going 0:22:56.760 --> 0:22:59.000 to arrest me and my media partner. There were a 0:22:59.040 --> 0:23:01.320 couple of protesters behind us and they're like, you're all 0:23:01.680 --> 0:23:04.400 under arrest and I was like, what are we under 0:23:04.440 --> 0:23:06.440 arrest for? And he said for curfew violation because the 0:23:06.480 --> 0:23:08.200 mayor had put it a curfew, and so I was like, well, 0:23:08.600 --> 0:23:12.680 the mayor's curfew exempts media. We're you know, press with 0:23:12.800 --> 0:23:15.880 badges and stuff on, and you know there's other people 0:23:15.880 --> 0:23:17.399 who's trying to argue with the cops, and I just 0:23:17.560 --> 0:23:19.159 you know, yelling at them, and I just kind of 0:23:19.240 --> 0:23:21.560 keep engaging him in conversation. He's like, I don't care, 0:23:21.560 --> 0:23:23.040 I'm go to arrest you. And finally what I say 0:23:23.119 --> 0:23:25.560 is like the mayor has said that we're exempt. Are 0:23:25.600 --> 0:23:28.359 you countermanding the mayor's orders? And he's a switch flipped 0:23:28.359 --> 0:23:30.600 in his head. Yeah, And not only did my partner 0:23:30.640 --> 0:23:32.520 and I not get arrested, but like the protesters behind 0:23:32.600 --> 0:23:36.000 us did not because it was just like, yeah, you 0:23:36.119 --> 0:23:38.520 had to you have to. Like, it's just this understanding 0:23:38.640 --> 0:23:41.320 of how bureaucracy and the people who make up bureaucracy 0:23:41.440 --> 0:23:42.119 like function. 0:23:42.000 --> 0:23:42.560 Right, totally. 0:23:42.680 --> 0:23:46.080 Aaron's not going to have a lot of that understanding, right, 0:23:47.160 --> 0:23:48.879 he builds he does build a lot more of it 0:23:49.000 --> 0:23:50.960 later in his life, but it's he starts out with 0:23:51.040 --> 0:23:53.199 less of it than I think even a normal person does, 0:23:53.240 --> 0:23:55.720 because he's just he's smart enough to get around it 0:23:55.800 --> 0:23:56.320 for so long. 0:23:56.400 --> 0:23:59.840 Yeah, and he's also engaging in the adult world because 0:24:00.040 --> 0:24:02.639 a lot of his intelligence levels are at adult levels. 0:24:03.000 --> 0:24:05.560 But maybe his like social and other understandings are. 0:24:05.680 --> 0:24:09.280 Exactly yes, and the adults around him are all and 0:24:09.400 --> 0:24:11.560 Cory Doctro, who's a friend of his from a very 0:24:11.600 --> 0:24:14.120 young age. We'll talk about this because Erin is small, 0:24:14.160 --> 0:24:15.920 and as we'll talk about, he's kind of sickly. The 0:24:16.000 --> 0:24:18.400 adults around him that he's quickly living in the world 0:24:18.480 --> 0:24:20.719 with are very protective of him, and I do think 0:24:20.760 --> 0:24:22.280 they're able to kind of shield him from a lot 0:24:22.320 --> 0:24:24.639 of these sort of realities of dealing with the system, 0:24:24.800 --> 0:24:27.680 you know, so he doesn't build up some of those 0:24:27.720 --> 0:24:30.520 skills as early as he maybe otherwise would have. Yeah, 0:24:31.720 --> 0:24:34.399 so you know, a lot of positive stuff happening for 0:24:34.480 --> 0:24:37.000 him in his early adolescence. A less positive thing that 0:24:37.080 --> 0:24:39.639 happens during this time is that when he's twelve, so 0:24:39.800 --> 0:24:42.000 kind of the same year he makes his Wikipedia thing, 0:24:42.760 --> 0:24:46.840 he's diagnosed with ulcerative colitis. This may help to exchange 0:24:47.160 --> 0:24:50.320 to explain some of his pickiness as an eater. Obviously, 0:24:50.400 --> 0:24:53.919 it's never a pleasant condition to deal with. Aaron seems 0:24:53.960 --> 0:24:58.119 to have particularly struggled. He would often lose days or 0:24:58.280 --> 0:25:01.239 entire weeks to abdominal pain intense it would leave him 0:25:01.280 --> 0:25:03.879 curled up on the floor. So he's always got this 0:25:03.960 --> 0:25:05.879 regular thing in his life where like sometimes he just 0:25:05.880 --> 0:25:08.600 won't be able to work because he's got he's in 0:25:08.720 --> 0:25:12.080 so much pain. You know, this is a regular thing 0:25:12.200 --> 0:25:15.600 he struggles with. That said, when he's able to work, 0:25:15.760 --> 0:25:18.640 he's so much smarter than most people that he still 0:25:18.720 --> 0:25:21.600 accomplishes much more than people who are not dealing with 0:25:21.680 --> 0:25:24.560 this kind of physical stuff, right well accomplish. In August 0:25:24.640 --> 0:25:28.040 of two thousand, Aaron finds himself on an email discussion 0:25:28.119 --> 0:25:30.680 thread for a group of programmers who are designing something 0:25:30.800 --> 0:25:35.200 called RSSI, which stands for Real Simple Syndication. It is 0:25:35.240 --> 0:25:38.360 a web feed that lets users build their own news aggregators, 0:25:38.440 --> 0:25:41.000 like pushing content from various sites into a single feed. 0:25:41.480 --> 0:25:45.840 And it's also it's one of the backroun like foundational 0:25:45.960 --> 0:25:49.199 technologies of the Internet. Every website you go to basically 0:25:49.359 --> 0:25:53.399 uses RSS to push, you know, and collect and stuff 0:25:53.440 --> 0:25:56.080 the things that they're publishing on a regular basis. You know, 0:25:56.560 --> 0:26:00.639 this is one of the most significant develop lipments in 0:26:00.760 --> 0:26:04.800 the early Internet, right if you're thinking about like the 0:26:05.240 --> 0:26:08.320 invention of like electricity, it's almost like a power transformer, 0:26:08.359 --> 0:26:09.879 I think might be a good way to describe it. 0:26:09.960 --> 0:26:15.200 It is absolutely foundational to how the Internet is used. Yeah, yeah, 0:26:15.960 --> 0:26:18.320 so Aaron is going to be, and there's a whole 0:26:18.359 --> 0:26:21.000 team of people. All of the others of him are 0:26:21.000 --> 0:26:22.920 adults who are working on this, but he's going to 0:26:22.960 --> 0:26:25.440 be one of them, right, So he gets into this group, 0:26:26.240 --> 0:26:28.560 and again it's just kind of the nerds that find 0:26:28.640 --> 0:26:32.399 themselves are working on this. They're all handling different parts 0:26:32.520 --> 0:26:36.480 of the project. And Aaron quickly becomes involved. And I 0:26:36.520 --> 0:26:39.480 think everyone who was there agrees he contributed. It's not 0:26:39.520 --> 0:26:41.359 like he did not invent RSS, right, A lot of 0:26:41.400 --> 0:26:46.080 people did, but his contributions were substantial to this thing 0:26:46.200 --> 0:26:50.160 that is a fundamental undergirding of how the Internet functions today. 0:26:50.400 --> 0:26:50.520 Right. 0:26:51.280 --> 0:26:53.720 And while this is happening, while he's working on this project, 0:26:53.920 --> 0:26:57.320 aspects of an ideology start to take shape in him 0:26:57.760 --> 0:27:00.320 based on his interactions with these other people who are 0:27:00.320 --> 0:27:03.240 both coders and also hackers, right, because at this period 0:27:03.280 --> 0:27:04.800 in the Internet, they're pretty much the same thing. 0:27:04.920 --> 0:27:05.040 Right. 0:27:05.240 --> 0:27:07.600 All the people who are building these are also hackers, 0:27:07.640 --> 0:27:10.160 you know. And I'm going to quote from an article 0:27:10.200 --> 0:27:13.719 in the New Republic. This ethos carried its own ideology, 0:27:13.840 --> 0:27:17.160 the ideology of free flowing information, or open access, as 0:27:17.200 --> 0:27:20.160 it became known. A self taught computer savant rarely felt 0:27:20.200 --> 0:27:21.840 more helpless than when he was cut off from the 0:27:21.880 --> 0:27:24.800 websites and books he used to navigate the world. Without them, 0:27:24.840 --> 0:27:27.359 he couldn't learn what he needed to earn a living, 0:27:27.480 --> 0:27:31.120 much less invent some disruptive technology. I'd skipped college, says 0:27:31.200 --> 0:27:34.680 Kevin Burton, who first met Schwartz through the RSS group. 0:27:35.080 --> 0:27:37.639 The fact that I couldn't access materials available to college 0:27:37.640 --> 0:27:40.159 students was why open access was always important to me. 0:27:41.040 --> 0:27:43.159 So Aaron is an not a what did act? So 0:27:43.200 --> 0:27:45.080 are a lot of these guys, and he goes from 0:27:45.160 --> 0:27:47.159 just kind of like this is just how it I 0:27:47.320 --> 0:27:50.199 am and how I learned to thinking about this more 0:27:50.280 --> 0:27:52.720 long ideological lines. Right, this is not just a thing 0:27:52.800 --> 0:27:54.679 for me, but this is a thing for other people. Right. 0:27:54.760 --> 0:27:58.119 This is fundamental to allowing human beings to progress. Is 0:27:58.200 --> 0:28:00.879 making sure that information is accessible. I know, yeah, as 0:28:00.960 --> 0:28:05.119 much as possible. If you go through enough recollections of 0:28:05.240 --> 0:28:07.800 Erin during this period, people who were in this working 0:28:07.840 --> 0:28:09.760 group with him will note that he was again, he 0:28:09.800 --> 0:28:11.720 could be a little bit of a brat, right. His 0:28:11.880 --> 0:28:14.000 questions are always good, but he could be kind of haughty. 0:28:14.080 --> 0:28:15.920 He could be kind of aggressive sometimes, and how he 0:28:16.040 --> 0:28:18.440 asked them, you know, he has a lot of this attitude. 0:28:18.440 --> 0:28:20.120 He doesn't understand where you're doing something. He's like, why 0:28:20.160 --> 0:28:21.560 are we doing this? Does this doesn't seem like the 0:28:21.640 --> 0:28:24.119 best thing to do? What about doing this? This is 0:28:24.160 --> 0:28:26.440 coming from a mix of genuine curiosity and he's he's 0:28:26.560 --> 0:28:28.280 he could be a little bit of snotty, right like 0:28:28.480 --> 0:28:31.680 he's he's a kid, you know, yeah, yeah, And he 0:28:31.760 --> 0:28:33.879 also he also this is you know, not entirely a 0:28:33.920 --> 0:28:36.440 negative thing. He fundamentally he doesn't have kind of a 0:28:36.480 --> 0:28:40.800 baseline level of respect based on people having greater experience, right, 0:28:41.000 --> 0:28:43.160 because he doesn't have this assumption that that means they 0:28:43.240 --> 0:28:45.360 know more than him, and often they don't, you know, 0:28:45.560 --> 0:28:50.000 right anyway, you know who does know more than all 0:28:50.120 --> 0:28:50.440 of us? 0:28:52.280 --> 0:28:55.320 The concept of potatoes the. 0:28:55.400 --> 0:28:58.360 Potato, I mean, yes, the potatoes are are wise indeed, 0:28:58.640 --> 0:29:01.920 but the sponsors of this pod cast no more than anything. 0:29:02.200 --> 0:29:04.440 So listen to them and do whatever they tell you. 0:29:04.680 --> 0:29:08.240 Let them sprout in your mind like a potato in 0:29:08.320 --> 0:29:09.240 a dark drawer. 0:29:09.680 --> 0:29:19.520 Or very true or literally don't and we're back. So 0:29:19.880 --> 0:29:22.920 you know again, Aaron still a kid, And obviously while 0:29:22.920 --> 0:29:24.720 he could be kind of a little maybe a little 0:29:24.760 --> 0:29:27.240 embrace of sometimes that doesn't turn anyone off from working 0:29:27.280 --> 0:29:29.840 with him, and in fact, his collaborators who know him 0:29:29.880 --> 0:29:32.440 only from his kind of not quite an honest but 0:29:32.480 --> 0:29:36.120 they don't know who he is, right, responses are are 0:29:36.160 --> 0:29:40.080 only put out because they do in person meetings regularly 0:29:40.200 --> 0:29:42.320 for members of this group, and he doesn't make any 0:29:42.360 --> 0:29:47.280 of the in person meetings. And yeah, and so I'm 0:29:47.280 --> 0:29:49.680 asking like, hey, man, like why don't you ever show 0:29:49.760 --> 0:29:52.000 up whenever we meet in person? He's like, well, i'd 0:29:52.040 --> 0:29:54.280 have to ask my parents because I'm fourteen. And then 0:29:54.320 --> 0:29:57.400 they're like, oh shit. I had a version that happened 0:29:57.400 --> 0:29:59.760 with Garrison when we started like working with them, right, 0:30:00.200 --> 0:30:02.800 like one of our mutual friends, like we had been 0:30:02.840 --> 0:30:05.560 hanging out with them, you know, after a horrible riot 0:30:05.560 --> 0:30:08.080 where all nearly got arrested, and like the next day, 0:30:08.680 --> 0:30:10.040 our friend texts me and is like, do you know 0:30:10.120 --> 0:30:12.880 that they're seventeen? I was like no, in fact I 0:30:12.960 --> 0:30:13.240 did not. 0:30:13.840 --> 0:30:18.280 Oh shit, that's how you learned. Yeah, yeah, I used 0:30:18.280 --> 0:30:20.280 to hitchhike with my friend who had a note from 0:30:20.440 --> 0:30:22.960 their from her parents being like, yes, I know what 0:30:23.080 --> 0:30:24.840 my daughter is doing. It's fine. 0:30:25.640 --> 0:30:27.640 At this point, you know, they start he starts being 0:30:27.680 --> 0:30:29.840 able to show up in person more often. These people, 0:30:30.000 --> 0:30:32.360 I think Corey doctro is on this list recognize like 0:30:32.440 --> 0:30:34.040 real life and they're all blown away by like how 0:30:34.120 --> 0:30:37.160 smart this kid, how young? And again they have this 0:30:37.320 --> 0:30:39.720 kind of it's this mix of this feeling like we 0:30:39.800 --> 0:30:43.720 need to protect this kid and also this kid is 0:30:43.800 --> 0:30:47.120 the fucking future, right yeah, and so he is kind 0:30:47.120 --> 0:30:50.480 of immediately ushered in and adopted almost by some of 0:30:50.560 --> 0:30:54.680 the most luminous names in technology, right he. But he 0:30:54.880 --> 0:30:56.800 meets and becomes to some extent a little bit of 0:30:56.840 --> 0:31:00.440 a protege of a guy named Tim berners Lee. Berners 0:31:00.520 --> 0:31:03.160 Lee is an MIT professor. He invented the world Wide Web. 0:31:03.560 --> 0:31:04.920 This is not one of those things when people say 0:31:04.960 --> 0:31:06.920 so and so invented this and it's like bullshit. It's like, 0:31:06.960 --> 0:31:09.440 well they invented no, no, he The world Wide Web 0:31:09.600 --> 0:31:14.320 is Tim berners Lee's invention. He created this, right, He, 0:31:15.120 --> 0:31:17.800 in a very literal sense, created this starting in nineteen 0:31:17.840 --> 0:31:20.520 eighty nine, he sketches out he's working for CERN at 0:31:20.560 --> 0:31:23.760 this point. And here one of the things that CERN, 0:31:23.840 --> 0:31:26.880 which is a big research institute. All these colleges, universities, 0:31:27.160 --> 0:31:31.040 they all have things that are versions of like what 0:31:31.200 --> 0:31:34.480 the Internet is going to be. These electronic communications networks 0:31:34.520 --> 0:31:36.800 that allow them to communicate on campus, allow them to 0:31:36.840 --> 0:31:40.640 communicate with each other and to some extent with other organizations, 0:31:41.080 --> 0:31:43.440 but none of them are built around the same standard, 0:31:43.560 --> 0:31:47.560 so letting everything call is a huge fucking mess. And 0:31:47.680 --> 0:31:51.680 berners Lee is like, we need a standard solution for 0:31:51.800 --> 0:31:55.200 how electronic communication is going to work, and he sketches 0:31:55.240 --> 0:31:59.360 out he designs the world Wide Web. That's literally the 0:31:59.480 --> 0:32:01.600 thing that he makes, Like, he comes up with a 0:32:02.080 --> 0:32:04.640 plan for it's going to be a global web of 0:32:04.760 --> 0:32:07.600 individual pages, each of which has their own address. They're 0:32:07.640 --> 0:32:10.720 all coded in HTML, and because they're on the same standard, 0:32:11.040 --> 0:32:14.080 all of these websites and whatnot can communicate with each other. 0:32:14.200 --> 0:32:16.320 This is the foundation of everything that makes the modern 0:32:16.360 --> 0:32:20.160 Internet possible. And when berners Lee creates this, he has 0:32:20.240 --> 0:32:25.800 this choice, which is that's a patentable idea, right he 0:32:25.960 --> 0:32:28.520 could have been the man with the patent for the Internet. 0:32:30.720 --> 0:32:34.800 He makes a key decision he chooses not to. He decides, 0:32:35.080 --> 0:32:37.040 I am not going to have a patent on this, 0:32:37.280 --> 0:32:44.680 so anybody can do this because because he's definitely a 0:32:44.800 --> 0:32:47.080 cool dude, right as far as I'm aware of and 0:32:47.200 --> 0:32:50.720 as a because he makes this fundamental decision, he's kind 0:32:50.760 --> 0:32:52.960 of viewed as a saint within the open source movement 0:32:53.040 --> 0:32:54.200 in a lot of ways, right. 0:32:54.480 --> 0:32:57.880 Like not surprising, but it's also a household name. 0:32:58.240 --> 0:33:01.520 Right, Yeah, he's also not a and he's not worth 0:33:02.200 --> 0:33:04.400 more money than anyone else in the world could never 0:33:04.560 --> 0:33:05.800 conceive of being worth it. 0:33:05.920 --> 0:33:10.000 Yeah, Like, fortunately there's that like thing where money of 0:33:10.080 --> 0:33:12.040 only buys happiness up to like seventy K year and 0:33:12.080 --> 0:33:12.840 then it just level alone. 0:33:12.880 --> 0:33:14.640 Yeah, so like I'm sure it's up to one hundred 0:33:14.680 --> 0:33:15.680 K year and whatever now. 0:33:15.640 --> 0:33:17.600 But yeah, oh yeah, that makes sense. That was like 0:33:17.800 --> 0:33:18.480 ten years ago. 0:33:19.280 --> 0:33:23.160 Yeah, berners Lee, you know he choose anyway, he meets 0:33:23.600 --> 0:33:26.560 erin early on and is so impressed he basically endorses 0:33:26.640 --> 0:33:29.760 him as his heir. Right, this is the kid who's 0:33:29.800 --> 0:33:32.000 going to like take the Internet into the future, Like 0:33:32.120 --> 0:33:35.200 this is the future of all this stuff that we're 0:33:35.240 --> 0:33:38.200 working on. This this really kind of utopian idea of 0:33:38.360 --> 0:33:42.360 what connecting the world is going to result in. Right, Yeah, 0:33:42.440 --> 0:33:45.440 So this guy, he's so impressed by Aaron he basically 0:33:45.640 --> 0:33:48.959 like endorses him as like this is my successor. Right, 0:33:49.040 --> 0:33:52.080 this is going to be the guy who takes the 0:33:52.200 --> 0:33:55.720 Internet into whatever it becomes in the future. That elevates 0:33:55.920 --> 0:33:59.280 Erin immediately. It kind of int like, immediately he's in 0:33:59.320 --> 0:34:02.480 the inner circle of people who are inventing the Internet, 0:34:02.680 --> 0:34:05.840 which is definitely happening at this period of time, and 0:34:06.040 --> 0:34:08.480 Erin gets kind of suddenly thrown into the tech conference 0:34:08.520 --> 0:34:10.600 circuit where he is kind of an object of marvel 0:34:10.760 --> 0:34:13.360 among the mostly much older men who had helped to 0:34:13.360 --> 0:34:16.880 build the foundations of the Internet. There's videos of this 0:34:17.040 --> 0:34:20.080 time of him, you know, speaking at conferences and stuff, 0:34:20.160 --> 0:34:22.960 and they tend to show Aaron who is absurdly small, 0:34:23.040 --> 0:34:26.400 almost especially next to these grown men, giving pretty thoughtful 0:34:26.480 --> 0:34:30.640 and complex answers while men decades his seniors sit next 0:34:30.680 --> 0:34:34.239 to him on stage. At age fifteen, he sends an 0:34:34.280 --> 0:34:37.800 email to a guy named Lawrence Lessig. Lessig is a 0:34:38.000 --> 0:34:41.040 legal scholar who is an early prominent activist for what 0:34:41.200 --> 0:34:43.960 we call the open Internet, and Lessig is in the 0:34:44.040 --> 0:34:48.200 process of inventing something called the creative commons at this point. Right, 0:34:48.320 --> 0:34:51.480 Lessig is the creator of the creative comments, which basically 0:34:51.600 --> 0:34:54.320 gives creators. You and I've both used creative comments, right, So, 0:34:54.760 --> 0:34:57.920 most people who make things that are cool. Yeah, And 0:34:58.200 --> 0:35:00.720 it allows creators of all kinds of meat the ability 0:35:00.800 --> 0:35:03.640 to copyright their work in ways that allow for adaptation 0:35:04.080 --> 0:35:08.359 and distribution much more easily without involving a publisher or whatever. Right. 0:35:08.400 --> 0:35:10.360 You don't have to have that, like, you have this 0:35:10.480 --> 0:35:13.160 kind of ready made kit for figuring out the rights 0:35:13.360 --> 0:35:17.200 status of your work and setting that up. So Aaron 0:35:17.280 --> 0:35:19.160 sends this guy an email, and I'm going to quote 0:35:19.160 --> 0:35:21.399 from an article in Rolling Stone for what happens next. 0:35:21.840 --> 0:35:24.279 Lawrence Lessig, now a professor at Harvard, gave Schwartz his 0:35:24.400 --> 0:35:26.919 first job, flying him out to San Francisco to write 0:35:26.960 --> 0:35:29.640 code for Creative Comments, a nonprofit that allows users to 0:35:29.680 --> 0:35:32.640 copyright the material in less restrictive ways. When the site 0:35:32.760 --> 0:35:35.319 celebrated its launch on December sixteenth, two thousand and two, 0:35:35.520 --> 0:35:37.839 Schwartz was invited to speak to the crowd of six hundred, 0:35:37.880 --> 0:35:42.040 which included Internet luminaries like cred Neumark, the founder of Craigslist. 0:35:42.280 --> 0:35:44.479 So Aaron gets up. This is Lessig talking. So Aeron 0:35:44.520 --> 0:35:46.239 gets up. He's not even big enough to stand over 0:35:46.320 --> 0:35:48.719 the podium, and he explains what the architecture of the 0:35:48.800 --> 0:35:50.800 site is, and the audience is just amazed that this 0:35:50.960 --> 0:35:54.120 was a fifteen year old kid, So he is. He 0:35:54.320 --> 0:35:57.120 helps to create creative comments. It's less ex idea. He 0:35:57.480 --> 0:36:00.000 does the coding for it, right, So he is fifteen 0:36:00.000 --> 0:36:04.320 teen two of the things that are fundamental underpinnings of 0:36:04.400 --> 0:36:06.719 the Internet. To this day, he's had a significant hand 0:36:06.800 --> 0:36:11.839 in making RSS and creative comments fifteen years old. Now, 0:36:12.080 --> 0:36:14.080 it is worth noting that Lessig is at this point 0:36:14.120 --> 0:36:17.360 in time, like a lot of us was, not, like 0:36:17.400 --> 0:36:19.239 a lot of people were at this period of time, 0:36:19.400 --> 0:36:22.040 one of the wild eyed optimists of the Internet. Right, 0:36:22.120 --> 0:36:24.640 he is actually not someone who feels it's inevitable that 0:36:24.840 --> 0:36:27.040 the Internet will lead us into a golden age of freedom. 0:36:27.360 --> 0:36:29.800 As a legal scholar, he is well aware of the 0:36:29.880 --> 0:36:32.600 weapons available to the enemy, and he knows that they 0:36:32.640 --> 0:36:35.880 are terrible in nature and inexhaustible nearly in quantity. 0:36:36.280 --> 0:36:38.640 Which makes sense to create something like creative commons because 0:36:38.640 --> 0:36:41.799 it's an attempt to keep the Internet on a decent track. 0:36:42.760 --> 0:36:45.399 Yes, exactly, And he's kind of critically and again he'll 0:36:45.440 --> 0:36:47.359 have an influence on Aaron, but he is not one 0:36:47.400 --> 0:36:48.960 of these people. And like a lot of the people 0:36:49.040 --> 0:36:52.160 that Aaron is close to that are making stuff with him, 0:36:52.400 --> 0:36:54.400 He's not one of these people who views the Internet 0:36:54.480 --> 0:36:56.279 as like this is all fundamentally got to work out 0:36:56.280 --> 0:36:58.640 for us. He sees the dangers because he understands the 0:36:58.680 --> 0:37:02.120 fucking law. Lawrence had gotten famous in hacker circles for 0:37:02.160 --> 0:37:04.520 a book he wrote nineteen ninety nine called Code and 0:37:04.680 --> 0:37:07.480 Other Laws of Cyberspace, And again he is a kind 0:37:07.520 --> 0:37:11.239 of definitely a visionary. His book argues that programmers are 0:37:11.280 --> 0:37:13.840 going to have more influence than laws on the development 0:37:13.960 --> 0:37:16.320 of the Internet. And to explain kind of where his 0:37:16.480 --> 0:37:19.240 thinking is going and why it is relevant to us today, 0:37:19.480 --> 0:37:21.960 I want to read an extended quote from Noah Scheiber 0:37:22.080 --> 0:37:25.440 writing for The New Republic, because it describes an extremely 0:37:25.520 --> 0:37:29.080 important moment in our early conceptions of the Internet. Quote. 0:37:29.760 --> 0:37:31.800 The law could tell you who to associate with and 0:37:31.880 --> 0:37:34.200 who not to, but you could always ignore it. If, 0:37:34.320 --> 0:37:36.560 on the other hand, a programmer decided it should be 0:37:36.600 --> 0:37:39.120 impossible to connect with a certain type of website, the 0:37:39.160 --> 0:37:42.160 average person had no way around it. The programmer was god. 0:37:42.560 --> 0:37:46.440 Suffice it to say, audiences were intrigued. In the late nineties, 0:37:46.520 --> 0:37:48.520 Lessig taught a class about the Internet that was open 0:37:48.600 --> 0:37:51.840 to both Harvard law students and MIT engineers. Early in 0:37:51.880 --> 0:37:54.480 the term, he asked, how do you know if something 0:37:54.520 --> 0:37:57.439 you're doing is wrong. The lawyer said that an action 0:37:57.640 --> 0:38:00.239 was wrong if it was against the law. The hackers said, 0:38:00.360 --> 0:38:02.680 it was only wrong if you failed to accomplish it. 0:38:03.200 --> 0:38:06.040 It was the most fundamental statement of the hacker ethos, 0:38:06.360 --> 0:38:09.040 and it seemed, and it teemed with idealism. If it 0:38:09.080 --> 0:38:12.640 were possible to increase human welfare through engineering, through delivering 0:38:12.760 --> 0:38:15.680 more social interaction or knowledge or happiness to more people 0:38:15.960 --> 0:38:18.200 than it would be a moral not to. There was 0:38:18.239 --> 0:38:21.359 only one hitch, which Lesseig dutifully explained, but which often 0:38:21.400 --> 0:38:24.840 went unheeded. The law would not be standing by idly. 0:38:25.280 --> 0:38:27.520 The belief had always been that lawyers can say what 0:38:27.640 --> 0:38:30.000 they want and will always have the technology to route 0:38:30.000 --> 0:38:32.759 around it, says Been Adida, a programmer who worked with 0:38:32.840 --> 0:38:36.480 Lessigan Schwartz. To the hackers, the law was at best anachronistic, 0:38:36.560 --> 0:38:39.920 at worst arbitrary, even cruel. Lesseg was one of the 0:38:39.960 --> 0:38:42.560 first folks to say, you know the power that code 0:38:42.600 --> 0:38:45.239 has over the way people interact online, You would be 0:38:45.320 --> 0:38:48.000 foolish to think the law is not going to regulate it. 0:38:48.200 --> 0:38:52.160 Adida recalls kind of a key key moment there. 0:38:52.360 --> 0:38:54.520 No, yeah, no, I'm just slept like thinking about it. 0:38:54.600 --> 0:38:56.759 I'm like, I mean, what it's like, i mean, it's 0:38:56.760 --> 0:39:00.440 all the movie Hackers, right, yeah, yeah, like I mean 0:39:00.520 --> 0:39:03.040 obviously doesn't come from the movie Hackers. The movie Hackers 0:39:03.080 --> 0:39:06.000 as attempted a representing something. It was like a thing 0:39:06.000 --> 0:39:07.480 where like hackers sort of at the time or a 0:39:07.520 --> 0:39:08.880 little bit like what the fuck? And then Hackers, like 0:39:08.880 --> 0:39:10.360 a couple of years later, I was like, that rules, 0:39:10.400 --> 0:39:13.680 that's our fucking legacy, you know. Yeah, but like this 0:39:13.880 --> 0:39:17.880 idea that and also this idea that like something is 0:39:17.960 --> 0:39:21.680 only wrong if you fail to do it right a 0:39:21.800 --> 0:39:25.600 sketchy you know. And it's like it's interesting and you 0:39:25.719 --> 0:39:30.520 can see how it was often or often intended as 0:39:30.560 --> 0:39:33.920 a force for freedom twenty years ago and is now 0:39:34.120 --> 0:39:37.319 that same concept is just. 0:39:37.600 --> 0:39:41.319 Like deeply, let's see what else, right, Yeah. A lot 0:39:41.400 --> 0:39:43.799 of people who were hackers, or at least who came 0:39:43.840 --> 0:39:46.000 out of the movement that came out of descended from that, 0:39:46.080 --> 0:39:48.919 are now into this like dark enlightenment reactionary shit. They're 0:39:49.080 --> 0:39:53.680 talking race like, yeah, the there's a fork that is 0:39:53.760 --> 0:39:56.440 going to occur in this community, and a lot of 0:39:56.520 --> 0:39:59.480 the people in it and what we're talking about, and 0:39:59.680 --> 0:40:01.680 you know who we're talking about now. Aaron is certainly 0:40:01.760 --> 0:40:04.600 on the side of the light side of that fork, absolutely, 0:40:04.680 --> 0:40:07.319 And the fork again, as a spoiler, you could if 0:40:07.360 --> 0:40:11.359 you wanted to split the fork at his death when 0:40:11.400 --> 0:40:11.880 it occurs. 0:40:12.560 --> 0:40:13.759 Yeah, that makes sense. 0:40:13.840 --> 0:40:18.799 Honestly, you would not be wrong to necessarily when you. 0:40:19.040 --> 0:40:24.960 Say indie media leads to Twitter, leads to Elon Musk Twitter, 0:40:25.440 --> 0:40:26.000 you know, like. 0:40:26.560 --> 0:40:33.120 Yep, yeah, exactly. At age seventeen, Aaron is accepted to 0:40:33.160 --> 0:40:36.760 Stanford for obvious reasons. Not hard to see how that happens. 0:40:37.320 --> 0:40:39.800 Aaron is obviously brilliant. Anyone with eyes can see that 0:40:39.840 --> 0:40:42.080 he's going to change the world, and Stanford wants some 0:40:42.200 --> 0:40:44.759 of his shine for themselves, right. That is what they do, 0:40:44.960 --> 0:40:47.880 that is how they make their bread. But as soon 0:40:47.920 --> 0:40:50.239 as Aaron arrives at the elite West Coast school, he 0:40:50.360 --> 0:40:53.120 sees it for the sham that it was. He writes 0:40:53.160 --> 0:40:55.399 at the time that Stanford is quote an idyllic little 0:40:55.400 --> 0:40:57.680 school in California, where the sun is always shining, and 0:40:57.760 --> 0:40:59.680 the grass is always green, and the kids are always 0:40:59.680 --> 0:41:03.520 out a tan. After three days at Stanford, Aaron decides 0:41:03.600 --> 0:41:05.719 to attend a party, he kind of forces himself to go. 0:41:06.040 --> 0:41:08.360 An article in The New Republic makes it seem like 0:41:08.440 --> 0:41:11.799 this was kind of an anthropological experiment by Aaron, more 0:41:11.880 --> 0:41:13.520 of that than an attempt to enjoy himself. 0:41:13.680 --> 0:41:13.919 Quote. 0:41:14.400 --> 0:41:17.400 He merely wanted to document the mating rituals of the teenager, 0:41:17.560 --> 0:41:20.960 a species that alternatively mystified and horrified him. In my 0:41:21.080 --> 0:41:24.320 culture of vaguely technical people, people converse by sharing information 0:41:24.440 --> 0:41:28.000 through mutually beneficial discussion and debate, he wrote on his blog. 0:41:28.200 --> 0:41:31.120 But the teenager system is altogether different and wholly alien 0:41:31.160 --> 0:41:34.640 to them. He is frustrated by more than just a 0:41:34.760 --> 0:41:38.080 lack of social skills. Aaron is angry that Stanford required 0:41:38.120 --> 0:41:40.960 ID cards with RFID transmitters, which can be used to 0:41:41.040 --> 0:41:44.920 track students. He hates the library because of how it's organized. 0:41:44.960 --> 0:41:47.560 He thinks it's an efficient and I'm sure he's right 0:41:47.600 --> 0:41:50.319 about that. And he was disgusted by the hygiene levels 0:41:50.360 --> 0:41:53.360 at the shared student facilities like the laundromat. As a 0:41:53.440 --> 0:41:56.359 consequence of this disillusionment, he spends most of his time 0:41:56.440 --> 0:42:00.160 in college hanging out with adults, particularly Lawrence Lessig and 0:42:00.320 --> 0:42:03.719 friend of the Pod Corey, doctor Rowe Lessig is again 0:42:03.760 --> 0:42:06.560 the guy who funded Creative Commons, and Corey is an 0:42:06.640 --> 0:42:10.879 activist and a wildly prolific author, very good author. They were, 0:42:10.920 --> 0:42:14.040 in short, good influences. But one also has to assume 0:42:14.120 --> 0:42:16.359 any seventeen year old who's hanging out with these guys 0:42:16.440 --> 0:42:18.440 and out their fellow teenagers, they're not going to get 0:42:18.480 --> 0:42:18.879 better at. 0:42:18.840 --> 0:42:21.560 Fitting in, right, Like, yeah, that's fair. 0:42:22.000 --> 0:42:23.600 Not that that's the most important thing, but you know, 0:42:23.719 --> 0:42:25.959 that's just a thing that's happening to him, right, And again, 0:42:26.080 --> 0:42:28.200 given some of the shit Stanford grads have recently been 0:42:28.239 --> 0:42:31.399 responsible for might have been for the best, like those 0:42:31.440 --> 0:42:36.000 guy's worse influence and not his fellow Stanford students. So 0:42:36.960 --> 0:42:39.440 this is not without stress though, right, The fact that 0:42:39.560 --> 0:42:42.759 he is adopted by, welcomed in by all of these 0:42:43.000 --> 0:42:47.520 very accomplished adults is not a thing devoid of stress 0:42:47.560 --> 0:42:50.280 for him. Right. The sheer odd confidence guys like Tim Berners, 0:42:50.320 --> 0:42:53.600 Lee and Lessig have for Schwartz is at that's a 0:42:53.640 --> 0:42:55.640 lot to put on the shoulders of a seventeen Yeah, right, 0:42:55.680 --> 0:42:57.520 being told you're the future of the Internet, You're going 0:42:57.560 --> 0:43:00.760 to be critical in this thing that is we believe 0:43:00.960 --> 0:43:03.719 necessary for the development of the human race. To be 0:43:04.080 --> 0:43:07.560 told that before you're even seventeen, that's a lot to 0:43:07.719 --> 0:43:12.359 have on your shoulders. Right. Aaron has absolutely shown an 0:43:12.360 --> 0:43:14.680 appetite for this work, but that doesn't mean there's not 0:43:14.719 --> 0:43:18.480 a burden there, right. Lisa Rain, one of Lesseg's aides, 0:43:18.560 --> 0:43:21.600 later told New Republic, with his intellect, we wanted to 0:43:21.640 --> 0:43:23.920 harness it for good instead of evil. I was worried 0:43:23.920 --> 0:43:26.080 that Microsoft would get a hold of him, which, again, 0:43:26.160 --> 0:43:30.479 for these adults, not an unreasonable thing to be concerned about. 0:43:30.600 --> 0:43:30.680 Right. 0:43:32.160 --> 0:43:35.160 So, I think, you know, all of this is based 0:43:35.239 --> 0:43:37.520 in a pretty wonderful amount of confidence that even love 0:43:37.640 --> 0:43:40.440 these guys had for Erin. Doctor Oh again has made 0:43:40.480 --> 0:43:42.680 the statement that a couple of times because, in part 0:43:42.719 --> 0:43:45.239 because Erin is so small, so vulnerable, you have this 0:43:45.360 --> 0:43:49.360 instinctivety to protect him, and this married with this intense 0:43:49.480 --> 0:43:52.440 faith in him. I think this led to a situation 0:43:52.560 --> 0:43:55.440 where Erin felt a lot of personal responsibility for the 0:43:55.760 --> 0:43:58.359 future of the Internet and people at a young age, 0:43:58.400 --> 0:44:00.640 and that's going to be difficult for him. That's going 0:44:00.680 --> 0:44:02.840 to be an added stress in his life. It is 0:44:02.960 --> 0:44:05.040 also worth noting here that Aaron is one of the 0:44:05.120 --> 0:44:09.040 most prolific bloggers of his generation. His need to create 0:44:09.160 --> 0:44:11.360 pros and work his thoughts and feelings out through the 0:44:11.360 --> 0:44:13.640 written word is as strong, if not stronger, than his 0:44:13.800 --> 0:44:16.120 desire to code, and in fact, there will be a 0:44:16.160 --> 0:44:18.080 point in his life when he's like, I don't I 0:44:18.200 --> 0:44:21.160 think I'm done with coding. I want to become an author. 0:44:21.200 --> 0:44:23.800 I would rather be like a middling author than a 0:44:23.880 --> 0:44:25.800 great coder. Like that's the thing he expresses at a 0:44:25.840 --> 0:44:26.600 point that's real. 0:44:27.560 --> 0:44:31.000 Yeah, did he write much fiction or anything like that? 0:44:31.160 --> 0:44:31.799 I guess we'll talk. 0:44:31.719 --> 0:44:33.960 About He had a novel that he kind of repeatedly 0:44:34.080 --> 0:44:35.719 worked on that he never I don't think he ever 0:44:35.800 --> 0:44:38.439 quite finished it. There's a book of his essays that's out. 0:44:39.920 --> 0:44:42.560 He's got this is again. You know, he's still a teenager. 0:44:42.600 --> 0:44:44.120 As smart as he is, He's working a lot of 0:44:44.120 --> 0:44:45.640 shit out. And one of those things is he has 0:44:45.719 --> 0:44:48.640 this deep desire for privacy. All of his friends will 0:44:48.640 --> 0:44:50.279 say he had a lot of issues sometimes with his 0:44:50.360 --> 0:44:52.320 friends knowing each other because he hated the idea that 0:44:52.360 --> 0:44:54.560 people would be talking about him, even if it was positive, 0:44:54.800 --> 0:44:56.719 when he wasn't there, Like, he just really had a 0:44:56.800 --> 0:45:00.719 gut revulsion of that This was kind of ward in 0:45:00.880 --> 0:45:02.880 him with his need to publish every single thing that 0:45:02.960 --> 0:45:05.080 he thought on the Internet under his name. Right, this 0:45:05.239 --> 0:45:07.640 is a complicated thing for this kid to deal with. Yeah, 0:45:07.920 --> 0:45:10.879 and I'm going to quote from Rolling Stone again here. 0:45:11.200 --> 0:45:13.399 On his blog, he had told this story about having 0:45:13.440 --> 0:45:15.880 a crush on this girl and stalking her. Lessig recalls, 0:45:16.120 --> 0:45:18.279 not in a gross way, it was cute. Anyway. He 0:45:18.360 --> 0:45:20.400 came to a reception at the law school whe Lessig 0:45:20.520 --> 0:45:22.840 was a professor, and I recount this during a conversation. 0:45:22.960 --> 0:45:25.000 He takes me aside and he goes, why would you 0:45:25.120 --> 0:45:26.839 do that? I said, what do you mean? He said, 0:45:27.000 --> 0:45:30.120 tell the secret? I said secret? You blogged it? He said, yeah, 0:45:30.160 --> 0:45:32.239 well I blogged it, meaning I blogged it for the 0:45:32.280 --> 0:45:34.200 people who read my blog. I didn't blog it so 0:45:34.320 --> 0:45:37.040 the whole world would know. And he is he's dealing 0:45:37.120 --> 0:45:39.120 with an early version of what we're all going to 0:45:39.200 --> 0:45:41.200 deal with as the Internet goes from this thing that 0:45:41.320 --> 0:45:43.200 only a few weirdos are on, do this thing that 0:45:43.280 --> 0:45:45.960 everyone is on by default, where he's like, you know, 0:45:46.080 --> 0:45:48.440 Lesseg's like, well you published this, right, why can't I 0:45:48.560 --> 0:45:50.080 talk about this? And he's like, well, I published it 0:45:50.160 --> 0:45:51.799 for the Internet, now for the real world. 0:45:52.320 --> 0:45:54.520 I'm very glad that I was an adult before social 0:45:54.560 --> 0:45:55.680 media and live journal on show. 0:45:55.760 --> 0:46:02.839 Absolutely Jesus, speaking of Jesus, buy some products. Jesus will 0:46:02.840 --> 0:46:03.240 be happy. 0:46:03.640 --> 0:46:11.480 Jesus, We're back. 0:46:12.080 --> 0:46:15.400 So Aaron decides to leave Stanford. He's there like a 0:46:15.520 --> 0:46:18.960 year and he decides to bounce, and that next summer 0:46:19.040 --> 0:46:22.040 he gets approached by what's called why Combinator, and why 0:46:22.160 --> 0:46:24.560 Combinator is an incubator for tech founders. 0:46:24.640 --> 0:46:24.799 Right. 0:46:25.640 --> 0:46:28.120 He had by this point come up with his own 0:46:28.160 --> 0:46:31.759 idea for a startup called infogami. This was a kind 0:46:31.800 --> 0:46:35.759 of early social media application, but instead of centralizing users 0:46:35.800 --> 0:46:38.200 on a one controlled hub, it would allow users to 0:46:38.320 --> 0:46:40.960 make their own websites. Right. So, instead of you can 0:46:41.000 --> 0:46:43.160 create your own account on this site and share stuff 0:46:43.160 --> 0:46:44.680 like you do on Instagram or whatever on the site, 0:46:44.800 --> 0:46:47.359 you create your own website and it's your website. I'm 0:46:47.400 --> 0:46:49.279 just creating a centralized set of tools for you to 0:46:49.320 --> 0:46:50.360 build your own websites. 0:46:50.440 --> 0:46:50.560 Right. 0:46:51.280 --> 0:46:54.239 Schwartz's instincts here show how different he is from a 0:46:54.280 --> 0:46:56.480 lot of the other tech genius types coming because they're 0:46:56.480 --> 0:46:58.640 all thinking, how can I create a walled garden and 0:46:58.960 --> 0:47:01.560 trap people there. That is not at all what he's 0:47:01.600 --> 0:47:03.440 thinking now, more of. 0:47:03.440 --> 0:47:05.839 A massimone guy than a Twitter guy. 0:47:06.760 --> 0:47:09.920 Yeah, yeah, definitely, at least ideologically. Now, that's not how 0:47:09.960 --> 0:47:12.000 this project's going to end up, because you know, he 0:47:12.080 --> 0:47:15.080 moves to Cambridge, Massachusetts, and he starts working on this 0:47:15.200 --> 0:47:19.160 project with pretty feverish intensity. While he's doing this, he's 0:47:19.200 --> 0:47:21.440 going to intermittently struggle with his illness. You know, this 0:47:21.560 --> 0:47:25.399 physical pain increasingly brings about bouts of depression that would 0:47:25.480 --> 0:47:29.040 render him unfunctional for weeks at a time. Still, on 0:47:29.120 --> 0:47:31.320 the day's Aaron could work again. He's able to accomplish 0:47:31.400 --> 0:47:34.279 so much work that it all kind of shakes out 0:47:34.320 --> 0:47:37.800 well in the long run. And eventually why Combinator pairs 0:47:37.880 --> 0:47:42.080 him with two other founders, para dudes named Steve Huffman 0:47:42.320 --> 0:47:46.280 and Alexis o'hanian, who were working on their own product Reddit, 0:47:46.640 --> 0:47:50.880 Serena Williams's husband, That's right, yes, Serena Williams's husband. So 0:47:51.719 --> 0:47:55.319 they are basically a lot of Aaron's ideas for Infogomi 0:47:55.360 --> 0:47:57.840 get folded into Reddit, and you know, Reddit kind of 0:47:57.920 --> 0:48:00.520 has started to exist, but it doesn't work it boogie, 0:48:00.560 --> 0:48:04.360 it's unstable. It can't be adopted on any meaningful scale 0:48:04.400 --> 0:48:07.600 because it's like, it's not good yet. Aaron comes in 0:48:07.719 --> 0:48:09.680 and he fixes all of the code, right, and so 0:48:09.800 --> 0:48:12.880 he becomes one of the founders of Reddit, which is, 0:48:13.440 --> 0:48:16.239 of all of the big modern social media sites, the 0:48:16.360 --> 0:48:19.520 closest to the old Internet. It still exists on the 0:48:19.560 --> 0:48:19.920 new one. 0:48:20.120 --> 0:48:22.879 And it's funny because reddithead this reputation of like being 0:48:22.920 --> 0:48:26.360 the incubator of bad ideas, but compared to everything that 0:48:26.480 --> 0:48:30.239 came after, Reddit's a little haven of like like when 0:48:30.280 --> 0:48:32.200 I want to look up a review of a product, 0:48:32.239 --> 0:48:34.279 I type thing and then read it, you know. 0:48:34.920 --> 0:48:37.600 Yeah, and if I have a problem, a technical issue 0:48:37.640 --> 0:48:39.640 I need to fix something, like, I will find the 0:48:39.760 --> 0:48:42.279 answer on Reddit before I find it on Google these days, right, 0:48:42.320 --> 0:48:44.080 I mean, I use Google, but I type the question 0:48:44.280 --> 0:48:48.320 and Reddit on it exactly find useful shit like it is. 0:48:48.719 --> 0:48:51.360 It is, for all of its flaws, still one of 0:48:51.440 --> 0:48:53.920 the best things on the Internet. Yeah, so at this 0:48:54.040 --> 0:48:56.719 point he is he is helping to invent Reddit, He 0:48:56.800 --> 0:48:59.319 has helped to invent RSS, He has helped to invent 0:48:59.400 --> 0:49:03.120 the creative commons. Right, nineteen year old kid, you know, 0:49:03.239 --> 0:49:05.200 kind of verging on I think twenty. At this point, 0:49:06.560 --> 0:49:10.560 his contributions are undeniable. But for the other folks at Reddit, 0:49:10.840 --> 0:49:14.000 his co founders, he is becomes increasingly frustrating to work 0:49:14.040 --> 0:49:16.839 with because while when he's working he gets a lot done, 0:49:17.080 --> 0:49:19.360 I think in total he gets as much done as anyone. 0:49:19.680 --> 0:49:22.560 He has this habit of dropping out of contact for 0:49:22.719 --> 0:49:24.640 days or even like a week or so at a time, 0:49:24.760 --> 0:49:26.440 and like hiding in his apartment. And when he does it, 0:49:26.520 --> 0:49:30.080 he's just reading books NonStop generally, or he's in too 0:49:30.160 --> 0:49:33.160 much pain to do much, but he doesn't. He's not 0:49:33.239 --> 0:49:35.600 good at communicating with the team about this stuff. 0:49:35.680 --> 0:49:36.600 So, like, you know, that's it. 0:49:36.760 --> 0:49:39.120 I don't think the Reddit guys are wrong, Like, yeah, 0:49:39.280 --> 0:49:41.080 it was kind of a frustration that he would just 0:49:41.120 --> 0:49:43.680 get a drop out and that we wouldn't know why. Right. 0:49:44.400 --> 0:49:46.960 This is about the time he gets kind of disillusioned 0:49:47.000 --> 0:49:48.879 with coding. In a two thousand and six blog post, 0:49:48.920 --> 0:49:53.320 he describes writing as his desired purpose in life. The 0:49:53.400 --> 0:49:55.800 good news for Aaron is that later that year, Conde 0:49:55.960 --> 0:49:59.400 Nast bought Reddit for twelve million dollars, and Aaron receives 0:49:59.480 --> 0:50:01.759 an even chunk of the payout. We don't know how 0:50:01.880 --> 0:50:04.360 much he gets. He seems not to have told anyone 0:50:04.400 --> 0:50:07.360 specifically about it. Probably somewhere a million or north of 0:50:07.400 --> 0:50:10.560 a million, right. Yeah, it's enough money, especially back then, 0:50:10.640 --> 0:50:12.560 that he does not have to work. You know, he 0:50:12.600 --> 0:50:14.799 would eventually have to make more money. Right. You can't 0:50:14.840 --> 0:50:17.359 live generally, probably off your whole life, for your whole life, 0:50:17.400 --> 0:50:20.719 off a million dollars if you're young. Right, But that's 0:50:20.840 --> 0:50:22.959 enough money that he doesn't have to worry about money 0:50:23.080 --> 0:50:25.759 for quite a while, right. And it's also you know, 0:50:25.920 --> 0:50:28.279 I found this interesting New Yorker article that is kind 0:50:28.320 --> 0:50:30.200 of a more a bit of a more critical take 0:50:30.320 --> 0:50:32.360 on Aaron and his legacy than some of the others 0:50:32.440 --> 0:50:34.400 that talks spends a lot of time talking about how 0:50:34.480 --> 0:50:36.640 much he loves money, which I don't think is fair. 0:50:36.760 --> 0:50:39.759 It does quote him talking about, you know, making some 0:50:40.040 --> 0:50:41.920 kind of bratty statements about like, oh, you know, I 0:50:42.040 --> 0:50:44.160 lose that much money in my couch cushions or whatever, 0:50:44.640 --> 0:50:47.040 and talk about how cool it is to have like money, 0:50:47.080 --> 0:50:48.680 and it kind of makes the claim that like, oh, yeah, 0:50:48.719 --> 0:50:51.680 Aaron loved money, which is not borne out by the 0:50:51.760 --> 0:50:53.600 rest of his life. I think he just has a 0:50:53.719 --> 0:50:56.239 reaction that any nineteen or twenty year old when they 0:50:56.239 --> 0:50:58.919 suddenly have a million dollars, which is like, fuck, that's dope. 0:50:59.000 --> 0:51:00.680 I don't have to do a thing I don't want 0:51:00.719 --> 0:51:03.360 to do anymore sick, which I don't think is I 0:51:03.560 --> 0:51:05.600 don't think that's element evidence of him being shallow. Who 0:51:05.600 --> 0:51:06.960 wouldn't feel that way? Right? 0:51:07.040 --> 0:51:09.920 Also, like, when you live in capitalism, you're presented as 0:51:09.960 --> 0:51:12.560 if it is a video game with a point system, 0:51:12.680 --> 0:51:15.040 and the measurement of the point system is money. And 0:51:15.120 --> 0:51:18.400 if you are a kid and you believe that that 0:51:18.640 --> 0:51:22.080 makes sense, you got told that, you know. But yet 0:51:22.160 --> 0:51:25.160 he also was doing all of this work to specifically 0:51:25.280 --> 0:51:27.319 under like the fact that his hero is the person 0:51:27.360 --> 0:51:31.720 who didn't he didn't lock shit up, you know, like yeah, yeah. 0:51:32.080 --> 0:51:34.160 His life past this point is not going to be 0:51:34.480 --> 0:51:37.239 defined by him seeking out money. Yeah right, Like that's 0:51:37.719 --> 0:51:40.080 ultimately what I'll make the decision based on. Yeah, Like, 0:51:40.160 --> 0:51:43.680 I'm sure he was fucking thrilled. Who wouldn't be, right, right, Like, 0:51:43.880 --> 0:51:46.680 that doesn't matter how much you hate capitalism. It's great 0:51:46.800 --> 0:51:48.239 to have enough money that you don't have to worry 0:51:48.239 --> 0:51:53.040 about money anymore. Yeah, totally, my parents knees. Yeah yeah, yeah, 0:51:53.520 --> 0:51:56.279 so Kande asked, buys it. They move shit over to 0:51:56.360 --> 0:51:58.920 like San Francisco, which thinks where their offices are. He 0:51:59.040 --> 0:52:01.960 stays on for a while, right, they make him move 0:52:02.040 --> 0:52:04.880 back West to work out of the office, which he hates. 0:52:05.040 --> 0:52:07.880 He hates working, he hates the corporate environment. He justlkes 0:52:07.920 --> 0:52:12.480 San Francisco. You know, it's not his place. It's not 0:52:12.680 --> 0:52:14.600 his kind of lifestyle. 0:52:14.760 --> 0:52:14.880 Right. 0:52:14.920 --> 0:52:17.640 He has a lot of issues adapting to this, not 0:52:17.800 --> 0:52:21.200 surprising based on the guy we've known so far. He 0:52:21.320 --> 0:52:23.959 meets a woman while he's in San Francisco. She becomes 0:52:24.040 --> 0:52:27.520 his girlfriend, a journalist named Quinn Norton. We will talk 0:52:27.560 --> 0:52:31.080 about Quinn Norton later. Controversial figure to say the least. 0:52:32.400 --> 0:52:35.800 She is a journalist who works with hackers. That's a 0:52:35.840 --> 0:52:38.400 lot of for reporting. She's also an anarchist. That's how 0:52:38.480 --> 0:52:41.080 she described. I don't know more about the tendency she 0:52:41.160 --> 0:52:45.319 subscribes to, but that's how she self describes. And by 0:52:45.400 --> 0:52:47.920 this point, according to Quinn, who is very close with him, 0:52:47.920 --> 0:52:51.680 at this period, he's growing dissolutioned with his work on Reddit. Quote. 0:52:51.760 --> 0:52:53.560 He wasn't sure if he had done a good thing. 0:52:53.719 --> 0:52:56.000 He began to see it as a way people wasted time. 0:52:56.560 --> 0:52:59.480 So he's got some issues with creating this thing that's 0:52:59.480 --> 0:53:01.480 one of the first kind of Web two point zero 0:53:01.880 --> 0:53:05.600 sort of foundations. This is also kind of going back 0:53:05.640 --> 0:53:07.160 and forth on This is part of what it's going 0:53:07.239 --> 0:53:09.400 to become. Another common pattern with Aaron, which is that 0:53:09.520 --> 0:53:12.799 he seems to regularly find himself racked with doubt over 0:53:12.840 --> 0:53:15.759 whether or not he'd accomplished anything of value in his life. Right. 0:53:16.080 --> 0:53:17.680 This is a regular thing for him where he's like, 0:53:17.680 --> 0:53:20.040 I don't think I've ever made anything. I think some 0:53:20.120 --> 0:53:22.320 of that's just because everything he makes is part of 0:53:22.360 --> 0:53:24.040 a team, right, And he's not going to be one 0:53:24.040 --> 0:53:27.160 of these guys like fucking Zucker. And that's true of 0:53:27.239 --> 0:53:29.239 all of these guys, by the way, all of these 0:53:29.440 --> 0:53:32.120 tech luminaries, none of them make anything on The closest 0:53:32.120 --> 0:53:35.920 you get is maybe Wosniak, right, who did legitimately sit 0:53:36.000 --> 0:53:38.719 down at a cobble together a personal computer. Right, But 0:53:38.960 --> 0:53:42.239 like none of these founders make anything on their own, 0:53:42.480 --> 0:53:45.040 you know, like that just simply doesn't happen, right, And 0:53:45.280 --> 0:53:47.680 like Aaron understands that. I think he feels kind of 0:53:47.719 --> 0:53:50.400 insecure about it. But like Aaron is everyone who was 0:53:50.440 --> 0:53:51.960 a part of these projects is like, yeah, he was 0:53:52.000 --> 0:53:53.440 a big part of them, he'd right, but. 0:53:53.520 --> 0:53:57.399 He didn't invent replace a web like his particular like right, yeah, 0:53:57.640 --> 0:54:00.959 Lessig is a guy who, yeah, just invented the world 0:54:01.000 --> 0:54:03.880 Wide Web, right, Yeah, you know Aaron seems to have 0:54:04.000 --> 0:54:06.560 kind of I don't think it's a constant thing for him, 0:54:06.600 --> 0:54:08.640 because he also has these periods like he can be 0:54:08.680 --> 0:54:09.280 a little braggy. 0:54:09.320 --> 0:54:11.360 I don't think in an unhealthy way, because he's accomplished 0:54:11.360 --> 0:54:13.839 a lot. I think it's just when he's sick, when 0:54:13.920 --> 0:54:16.040 he's hurting, when he's dealing with bouts of depression. This 0:54:16.160 --> 0:54:17.600 is a thing that comes up with him a lot, 0:54:17.760 --> 0:54:20.279 like I don't think I've ever made anything about you, right, 0:54:21.200 --> 0:54:25.600 it's irrational. That doesn't stop that, I mean, everyone from happening, right, 0:54:26.000 --> 0:54:29.160 right exactly, And maybe that can help you if you 0:54:29.280 --> 0:54:31.680 deal with imposter syndem knowing that, like yeah, this guy 0:54:31.719 --> 0:54:36.840 who literally no one can deny his contributions to science 0:54:36.920 --> 0:54:41.239 and technology felt that way too. So yeah, again, he's 0:54:41.239 --> 0:54:44.360 struggling increasingly during this period, and the fact that he 0:54:44.560 --> 0:54:46.359 has to work at this office, he's in a place 0:54:46.400 --> 0:54:48.480 he doesn't really want to be, contributes to that, and 0:54:48.480 --> 0:54:51.240 I'm going to quote from Rolling Stone again. That Christmas, 0:54:51.320 --> 0:54:54.320 two months after he'd started working in Redditt San Francisco office, 0:54:54.680 --> 0:54:57.360 Schwartz took a trip to Berlin to attend the Chaos 0:54:57.480 --> 0:55:00.719 Communication Congress, one of the most popular HA conventions in 0:55:00.760 --> 0:55:02.960 the world. On his way back home, he stopped in 0:55:03.000 --> 0:55:06.120 Cambridge for a visit when his lifelong stomach troubles asserted themselves, 0:55:06.360 --> 0:55:09.760 leaving him writing in pain for several days. On January eighteenth, 0:55:09.760 --> 0:55:11.360 two thousand and seven, he wrote a post on his 0:55:11.440 --> 0:55:14.840 blog titled A Moment Before Dying, which began there is 0:55:14.880 --> 0:55:18.160 a moment immediately before life becomes no longer worth living, 0:55:18.280 --> 0:55:20.359 when the world appears to slow down and all its 0:55:20.440 --> 0:55:24.800 myriad details suddenly become brightly, achingly apparent. Written as a 0:55:24.840 --> 0:55:27.360 short story in the third person, the post described a 0:55:27.440 --> 0:55:30.960 young man Erin, who had decided to kill himself for Erin, 0:55:31.040 --> 0:55:34.160 and this is him writing. That moment came after exactly 0:55:34.239 --> 0:55:37.240 one week of pain, seven days of searing, tormenting agony 0:55:37.320 --> 0:55:40.239 that poured forth from his belly. The post alarmed his 0:55:40.280 --> 0:55:42.239 Reddit partners. It was the first they had heard from 0:55:42.280 --> 0:55:45.480 him in weeks, and it appeared to be a suicide note. Ohanian, 0:55:45.719 --> 0:55:48.440 one of the original founders, called the local police department 0:55:48.480 --> 0:55:51.520 and officers were dispatched to the apartment. Just before they arrived, 0:55:51.719 --> 0:55:54.160 Schwartz snuck out this onto the street, and in the 0:55:54.200 --> 0:55:57.000 wake of the incident, went to links to downplay at severity, 0:55:57.280 --> 0:55:59.799 changing the original post from Erin to Alyx as if 0:55:59.840 --> 0:56:02.400 to make clear that suicide was not something the actual 0:56:02.560 --> 0:56:07.000 Erin would ever seriously consider. So that's, you know, shows 0:56:07.040 --> 0:56:09.600 you where his head is. That's worrying, right. I'm not 0:56:09.680 --> 0:56:12.640 surprised and was concerned by this. I mean, chronic illness 0:56:12.719 --> 0:56:18.959 is an It's a real motherfucker yeeah. Now, this plus 0:56:19.040 --> 0:56:20.480 the fact that he had not been showing up to 0:56:20.560 --> 0:56:22.920 work for long periods of time, is going to be 0:56:23.000 --> 0:56:26.880 what precipitates a pretty rapid resignation from Reddit, and in 0:56:27.000 --> 0:56:30.040 short order, Erin is a free agent again. His next 0:56:30.239 --> 0:56:34.640 project would be his most ambitious, The Open Library. Along 0:56:34.680 --> 0:56:39.759 with Brewster Kahl, Alexis Rosi, a, Nan Chappotu, and Rebecca Malamood, 0:56:40.120 --> 0:56:43.920 Aaron embarked on a project to collect online digital copies 0:56:44.080 --> 0:56:47.560 of every book imaginable. The idea is every book will 0:56:47.560 --> 0:56:49.719 have a page to the extent that's possible. The ones 0:56:49.760 --> 0:56:51.320 that are open source, that are old enough will have 0:56:51.440 --> 0:56:53.480 full scans of the book that you can like search 0:56:53.640 --> 0:56:56.080 and read. The books that we don't have access to 0:56:56.200 --> 0:56:58.759 will at least have, you know, ideally we'll get a 0:56:58.840 --> 0:57:00.839 copy or that people could check out online or something, 0:57:00.880 --> 0:57:02.279 but we'll at least have a page for it that 0:57:02.360 --> 0:57:04.160 explains who wrote it, what it is, what's in it. 0:57:05.440 --> 0:57:07.600 And the online library is still around today. It's one 0:57:07.600 --> 0:57:10.680 of the most significant storehouses of knowledge in the history 0:57:10.719 --> 0:57:14.360 of the human race. Right, Aaron is foundational in creating 0:57:14.440 --> 0:57:16.760 the open library. He's one of the people who helps 0:57:16.800 --> 0:57:20.280 to found it. He's only on that, I think for 0:57:20.400 --> 0:57:23.400 like a year, maybe a little less, and you know, 0:57:23.520 --> 0:57:26.760 he contributes significantly, and then he finds himself drawn in 0:57:26.760 --> 0:57:29.520 another direction and kind of bounces. Some of this is 0:57:29.560 --> 0:57:32.520 because he gets frustrated with the refusal of big libraries 0:57:32.560 --> 0:57:35.280 to share their catalogs. But as call, who's one of 0:57:35.320 --> 0:57:38.480 the founders, later told Rolling Stone, Aaron floated, that's how 0:57:38.520 --> 0:57:40.600 he worked, and you had to accept it. He didn't 0:57:40.640 --> 0:57:42.720 ask to get paid much. He really thought of himself 0:57:42.720 --> 0:57:44.960 as a volunteer for the world, and that is what 0:57:45.040 --> 0:57:48.000 he does. He'll come into these projects, he'll help with 0:57:48.120 --> 0:57:50.880 the founding vision, he'll help make them work, and then 0:57:50.880 --> 0:57:53.240 he's going to bounce you know, yea and move on 0:57:53.320 --> 0:57:55.240 to the next thing. That's just who he is. That's 0:57:55.280 --> 0:57:58.080 how his brain works, that's how he's functional, right, And 0:57:59.120 --> 0:58:01.440 you know calls atude is like, yeah, you know, it 0:58:01.440 --> 0:58:03.040 would have been nice to have him around for longer, 0:58:03.080 --> 0:58:04.960 but he did. He did his bit, and he moved on. 0:58:05.080 --> 0:58:07.200 And that's just Aaron. You just have to understand that. 0:58:07.520 --> 0:58:12.560 Well, you know that is. 0:58:14.080 --> 0:58:19.880 Longer, but yeah, he did his bit. So if you're 0:58:19.920 --> 0:58:22.320 keeping track, Aaron Schwartz, who is now at the start 0:58:22.360 --> 0:58:24.240 of his twenties, I think he's just now able to 0:58:24.400 --> 0:58:27.720 drink legally, has played a key role in developing RSS, 0:58:27.960 --> 0:58:31.120 in the creation of creative commons, in the creation of Reddit, 0:58:31.240 --> 0:58:34.560 and in the creation of the Open Library. Now, what's 0:58:34.600 --> 0:58:36.680 most amazing to me about this guy is that at 0:58:36.760 --> 0:58:39.080 this point he could have picked a lucrative job for 0:58:39.200 --> 0:58:42.400 himself literally anywhere in the tech industry. There is nowhere 0:58:42.440 --> 0:58:44.920 that would not have that wouldn't have paid so much. 0:58:45.040 --> 0:58:48.360 It hurt to get this guy right. He does not 0:58:48.640 --> 0:58:51.800 have any interest in that his heart continually pulls him 0:58:51.840 --> 0:58:54.600 towards projects that serve a social good and make knowledge 0:58:54.680 --> 0:58:58.520 accessible to as many people as possible. That's not specifically 0:58:58.600 --> 0:59:00.920 his goal his entire career, but that's he is right now. 0:59:01.920 --> 0:59:04.560 In two thousand and eight, Aarin attends a retreat by 0:59:04.600 --> 0:59:10.400 the EIFL, the Electronic Information for Libraries. It's a nonprofit 0:59:10.520 --> 0:59:13.880 that seeks to increase access to knowledge in developing economies 0:59:13.920 --> 0:59:16.360 around the world. The event, which is held at a 0:59:16.520 --> 0:59:19.680 former monastery in Italy, seems to have had a somewhat 0:59:19.720 --> 0:59:23.320 evangelical air to it. Erin is perhaps overtaken by the 0:59:23.400 --> 0:59:25.600 sense of techno optimism in the air, and it's not 0:59:25.680 --> 0:59:28.120 hard to see why. This was the tail end of 0:59:28.120 --> 0:59:31.120 the Bush years, this long period of neo con dominance 0:59:31.160 --> 0:59:34.720 that is eroding in the face of Barack Obama's presidential campaign, 0:59:34.720 --> 0:59:37.040 which is the most optimistic thing Americans had seen in 0:59:37.120 --> 0:59:40.520 politics in a generation. At least. Late in the event, 0:59:40.840 --> 0:59:43.560 Erin and an unknown number of co writers put together 0:59:43.640 --> 0:59:48.240 a document known as the Guerrilla Open Access Manifesto. A 0:59:48.360 --> 0:59:50.840 number of people contribute, it is unclear how many. It 0:59:50.920 --> 0:59:53.480 is unclear who they are. Erin's is the only name 0:59:53.520 --> 0:59:56.160 that winds up on the thing right, and it includes 0:59:56.240 --> 0:59:59.880 some pretty spicy lines. This is how it opens. Information 1:00:00.160 --> 1:00:02.120 is power, but like all power, there are those who 1:00:02.160 --> 1:00:04.680 want to keep it for themselves. The world's entire as 1:00:04.760 --> 1:00:07.920 scientific and cultural heritage, published over centuries and books and 1:00:08.000 --> 1:00:11.120 journals is increasingly being digitized and locked up by a 1:00:11.200 --> 1:00:14.360 handful of private corporations. Want to read the papers featuring 1:00:14.360 --> 1:00:16.680 the most famous results of the sciences, you'll need to 1:00:16.720 --> 1:00:21.400 send enormous amounts to publishers like read Elviser, and the 1:00:21.560 --> 1:00:23.520 document points out one of the things that's happening here 1:00:23.600 --> 1:00:26.720 is a lot of these publishers. The information in them 1:00:27.240 --> 1:00:29.480 is maybe in a lot of cases open source. It's 1:00:29.520 --> 1:00:32.240 publicly funded studies. But unless you're able to get to 1:00:32.360 --> 1:00:34.280 one of the libraries that has it, you have to 1:00:34.520 --> 1:00:37.080 pay to get access to the documents that it's You 1:00:37.120 --> 1:00:39.360 have to pay his service like jstore to get access 1:00:39.440 --> 1:00:42.480 to it. And Aaron's like, that's fucking bullshit. You know, 1:00:43.160 --> 1:00:46.360 like this is our information, and you know, obviously the 1:00:46.440 --> 1:00:49.680 other stuff I think should be shared too. The document 1:00:49.760 --> 1:00:53.040 points out that open access, if successful, would only ensure 1:00:53.160 --> 1:00:56.720 ongoing access for future publications, while the total of published 1:00:56.720 --> 1:00:58.680 work up to the point that open access becomes a 1:00:58.720 --> 1:01:02.000 thing would remain locked up. The document decries this as 1:01:02.040 --> 1:01:04.720 too high a price to pay, and then asks rhetorically, 1:01:05.120 --> 1:01:10.320 what can we do about this? Quote those with access 1:01:10.360 --> 1:01:13.560 to these resources, students, librarian, scientists, you have been given 1:01:13.560 --> 1:01:16.040 a privilege. You get to feed at this banquet of 1:01:16.120 --> 1:01:18.000 knowledge while the rest of the world is locked out. 1:01:18.280 --> 1:01:21.120 But you need not. Indeed, morally you cannot keep this 1:01:21.240 --> 1:01:23.560 privilege for yourselves. You have a duty to share it 1:01:23.640 --> 1:01:26.600 with the world, and you have trading passwords with colleagues, 1:01:26.680 --> 1:01:30.760 filling download requests for friends. So he is basically saying 1:01:31.280 --> 1:01:33.680 what people are already doing, have access to the stuff 1:01:33.720 --> 1:01:35.600 to their buddies, we need to do for the world. 1:01:35.760 --> 1:01:37.840 We need to do this to give access, particularly to 1:01:37.960 --> 1:01:40.560 people in the global South. You do not have the 1:01:40.680 --> 1:01:43.720 infrastructural access to this stuff in the same way that 1:01:43.800 --> 1:01:45.720 people can kind of wangle their way into getting it 1:01:46.480 --> 1:01:50.840 in the United States. In Europe. This is controversial among 1:01:50.920 --> 1:01:53.320 his colleagues at this conference. These are all people who 1:01:53.360 --> 1:01:55.560 believe in open access, but they are people who work 1:01:55.600 --> 1:01:59.480 within the system for legal nonprofit organizations. Aaron is saying 1:01:59.520 --> 1:02:02.200 some hackers here right what he is saying could be 1:02:02.320 --> 1:02:04.800 read as an incitement to illegal activity, which. 1:02:04.680 --> 1:02:06.640 Is good positive. 1:02:07.280 --> 1:02:11.479 I totally agree, yeah, that this is controversial among people 1:02:11.480 --> 1:02:13.880 who are like, we are working within the system and 1:02:13.960 --> 1:02:17.280 this we see this as potentially kind of dangerous right now, 1:02:17.880 --> 1:02:19.720 the fact that this is controversial among them, it's not 1:02:20.360 --> 1:02:22.479 wildly different in tone from a lot of hacker pros 1:02:22.520 --> 1:02:24.480 that has come out in the nineties and early two thousands. 1:02:24.560 --> 1:02:27.240 And you know, eventually, whatever hubbub there is from this 1:02:27.360 --> 1:02:29.280 kind of passes and life goes on for a while, 1:02:29.360 --> 1:02:31.440 and that's where we're going to end for part one 1:02:31.720 --> 1:02:33.960 of this episode. Magpie, how are you feeling? 1:02:34.440 --> 1:02:37.160 I feel great because I know that only positive things 1:02:37.200 --> 1:02:42.200 are coming in the future. And yep, I really the 1:02:42.520 --> 1:02:44.680 main thing that I know about is this open access 1:02:44.680 --> 1:02:48.439 stuff about arn Schwartz, and I as someone who also 1:02:49.800 --> 1:02:52.760 has never I've never had institutional access to this knowledge, 1:02:53.440 --> 1:02:57.120 and I do a lot of history research and things 1:02:57.240 --> 1:03:01.400 like that, so I've always been very appreciative of I 1:03:01.440 --> 1:03:05.520 don't know how to phrase this carefully. I like open access, 1:03:05.840 --> 1:03:09.640 That's what I'll say. And I think that it's an important, 1:03:10.680 --> 1:03:13.320 important thing like that. It is just actually true, and 1:03:13.440 --> 1:03:15.280 especially talking about it in terms of like how it 1:03:15.360 --> 1:03:18.160 impacts people in the global South, like where you can't like, 1:03:19.040 --> 1:03:21.120 you know, I don't go to a fancy college, but 1:03:21.200 --> 1:03:23.000 I know some people go to fancy colleges, and so 1:03:23.080 --> 1:03:25.160 I just am like, hey, what do you think about 1:03:25.200 --> 1:03:26.280 this one thing? You know? 1:03:26.880 --> 1:03:31.200 Yep. So well, that's the podcast. We'll be back next 1:03:31.280 --> 1:03:32.480 week for the conclusion. 1:03:32.600 --> 1:03:34.520 Oh about Santa Claus. 1:03:35.280 --> 1:03:38.120 All right, everybody, thanks for listening. We's done zo bye. 1:03:44.120 --> 1:03:46.800 Behind the Bastards is the production of cool Zone Media. 1:03:47.200 --> 1:03:49.800 For more from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool 1:03:49.880 --> 1:03:53.840 Zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, 1:03:53.920 --> 1:03:56.280 Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.