The Internet's Own Boy

Yesterday I watched a documentary called “The Internet’s Own Boy,” it was about Aaron Swartz, boy genius, co-founder of reddit, a fierce leader in the campaign against SOPA, and an advocate of our rights in the digital age. Most of the time when faced with stories of 13 year olds doing incredible things, in Aaron’s case he was one of the main developers working on RSS, I’m left to wonder “what am I doing with my life.” But what impressed me more than his seemingly bottomless brilliance was his tenacity in which he tried to change the world.

I remember back (around late 2011) when my favorite youtubers started posting videos about SOPA pleading their watchers to sign petitions. If you're not familiar with SOPA it was bill that would essentially cripple the internet allowing companies to shut down entire websites for extremely loose definitions of copyright infringement (ie. linking to a site with pirated content, posting a cover on youtube, etc). I knew that it was evil and bad, but 16 year old me did nothing about it, not even take the time to sign out one of those petition, however many seconds it would taken, even though I basically lived on the internet. I’m pretty sure some of it was part “I’m just a teenager, what can I do?” and the other, plain lack of education. Back then I had no idea that this crazy bill actually had a very strong chance of passing, that in a year the U.S. could’ve been sent into the internet dark ages.

I don’t think I’ve gotten much better since then either. I’m finally old enough to vote in the next election but all I really know about any of the candidates are the occasional posts that crop up on my facebook feed (usually either about how awesome Bernie Sanders is or taking a jab at  Donald Trump). Now that I think about it, the same rationale could be applied here: “I’m just a single person, what can I do?” coupled with the fact that I really know next to nothing about what platforms our candidates are running on. I really am no better than I was four years ago.

Aaron was focused on huge monumental change, like on a worldwide scale, and here I am just beginning to explore what it means to make myself a better person. I’m still preoccupied with “can I make a living when I graduate college” (the answer is probably, of course…), but Aaron was busy trying to figure out how to make access to information on the internet a universal right.

I’ve gone to two hackathons so far and what I made was “the Olin Orchestraless Conductor” and “Turtlebot.” My mindset going into hackathons was usually “I want to make something cool, I don’t care if it’s useless!” But I think next hackathon I want to try a hand at changing the world.