Comments on: Remembering Aaron Swartz Again

By: Eli Rabett

Eli Rabett — Sat, 09 Feb 2013 03:48:15 +0000

But there are those busy with the eraser. Carmen Ortiz's partisans are trying to resuscitate her reputation. She needs to remain a constant reminder to prosecutors that geeks have claws to restrain them. Whether this can be generalized to drug and other jihads is an open question, but keeping that element of doubt in the minds of those with essentially unlimited power is important.

By: Henry Farrell

Henry Farrell — Fri, 08 Feb 2013 21:38:49 +0000

Salient – that is so right that it hurts.

By: nnyhav

nnyhav — Fri, 08 Feb 2013 20:25:09 +0000

I think inviting extrapolations was Aaron Swartz’s extrapolation:
http://nnyhav.blogspot.com/2013/01/aaron-swartz.html

By: Jeanmarie

Jeanmarie — Fri, 08 Feb 2013 19:40:27 +0000

Thank-you. I didn’t know Aaron; incredibly, I wasn’t even aware of him until he died, but now that I’ve read a lot about him I mourn his loss.

By: Salient

Salient — Fri, 08 Feb 2013 19:15:37 +0000

This comes really close to something percolating in my mind since Aaron passed. You can’t memorialize ingenuity, because you can’t reflect on ingenuity without hindsight. So you memorialize the some of the best and most lasting consequences of that ingenuity. But ingenuity is necessarily transitory, not lasting; an ingenious person propels you a step ahead of them, and the unexpected velocity is at least as important as the unexpected direction. But only the direction is backwards-traceable in history, in giving an account; even attempting to express the velocity, the energy, you resort to hand gestures, trying to communicate the push of it. I try to write up even just, an anecdote about discussing Sam Bowles’ book, you know? Five frickin’ years as a writer now and still my fingers are off the keys more than they’re on them, and whatever does get typed out reads like a pontificating obituary.

So the memorial is a piss-poor substitute even for the memory of the person. It’s not quite all that we’ve got, but it’s all that we have that we know how to share.

By: Bruce Wilder

Bruce Wilder — Fri, 08 Feb 2013 19:10:55 +0000

https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/fire-assistant-us-attorney-steve-heymann/RJKSY2nb