The recent BBC documentary on the life and death of Aaron Swartz was as fascinating as it was moving. For me the key moment in the programme is the one of realisation that centres on a part of the interview with Quinn Norton where she describes her treatment at the hands of the U.S. District Attorney, in which she asserts that she is "still angry" that "we are OK with a system that tries to game people". My simple paraphrasing does little to emphasise the raw emotion and power of that video clip; I have watched it a number of times in order just to get the quote and I have been on the brink of tears every time. It might seem massively clichéd, but it feels like the moment the Internet grew up. The Aaron Swartzs of this world thought that they would be able to take on the injustices that they saw in the world with impunity because they were not doing anything anyone could really take seriously as wrong. The establishment media had been quietly demonising hacker culture for years, but that was largely on the back of a few silly childish pranks and even more media sensationalism, no one took that seriously did they, really? Turns out they did. Of course they did. Anything that threatens the status quo is automatically presented by the mainstream media and politicians as either ridiculous and disproportionate (feminism) or dangerous and subversive (direct democracy) or anti-business (socialism). These associations are made continuously at a low level so that they are pretty much second nature when it comes to dismissing the validity of the arguments of any of these groups. If this attitude had been engendered by a state or institution then it would be propaganda, but the people who espouse these views genuinely believe them because if any such movement was successful in achieving its goals, it would probably be to the detriment of these people. So they have genuine self interest in working against any such movement. Unfortunately, as they also have access to much of the world's wealth, power and influence they manage to make their opinion count much more than that of the average person. Indeed over much of human history (and certainly no less now than ever before), they have managed to convince everyone else that the service of their best interest is merely common sense. They have done an equally good job of convincing us that the contemplation of any alternative is dangerous or a sign of mental instability. It's easy for them to believe these things because from their point of view anything that threatens their position is dangerous madness, I'm just not sure why the rest of us go along with it so willingly. I guess partly because it requires not inconsiderable effort to think against an accepted wisdom that is reinforced daily through its public representation and the laws that subscribe it. Swartz came up against a problem that many very intelligent people encounter: the fundamental lack of logic in the systems, laws and interpretations of those laws that bound our world. He believed that if he pushed at the illogical points in the law or society, he would be able to bend them to a more logical position. Unfortunately it appears as if you are only allowed to bend the law once you own it. As many people on the documentary pointed out, whilst the U.S. State was attempting to prosecute Swartz - piling on as many charges as it could - the most heinous financial crimes in decades were going entirely unpunished. The view held by western governments of course being that the financial system is far too important to meddle with regardless of the detrimental impact it has on the lives of their citizens, whereas even potentially marginally disruptive political movements need to be snuffed out using the full weight of the law (or disproportionate amounts of legal action at least). If any stronger indication that the balance of power within our democracies is thoroughly unbalanced exists, I'm not entirely sure where.
Swartz's 'mistake' was that he failed to make himself part of the 'indispensable' economic landscape before he started flouting the strictest interpretation of the law (and more importantly threatening the political and economic status quo). If he had taken any one of the companies that he was involved in founding on to be a Twitter or Facebook (maybe made a few party donations) and then used the corporation to steal information from another company, he'd have been fine. Sure the company would have been fined, but that would just have been an adjustment in its share price; as an indispensable captain of industry, it would have been unthinkable to prosecute the man himself. Unfortunately for Swartz, he wasn't really interested in the corporate world, indeed he could all too easily see the negative impact of so many of its failings and certainly of its dominance of modern politics. It would perhaps be a fitting legacy for him if more of us were more willing to do something about it.
