The Boy Who Could Change the World review – the writings of Aaron Swartz, genius programmer and campaigner for internet freedom

Swartz shaped much of the internet, before turning to political activism and the cause of equal access to information. He was facing prosecution for data theft when he hanged himself aged 26

In his introduction to this anthology of blog posts and speeches by the late web pioneer Aaron Swartz, ethics professor Lawrence Lessig wrestles with the question of whether it’s fair to anthologise a lifetime’s worth of any person’s writing. He goes on to wonder whether Swartz would have approved of the publication of the volume he’s introducing, and tells a story about Swartz getting upset with him for describing one of his blog posts to some friends when he was a student at Stanford. The celebrated activist, who spent much of his short life promoting the theory that ideas should be freely available online to everyone, admonished Lessig for recapitulating his post to an audience of outsiders, telling Lessig: “That was private.”

What Swartz meant, Lessig goes on to say, was that the anecdote was intended for readers of his blog, not “random” people. It’s a justifiable concern. What happens to online writing when it leaves the internet, either by being described or, as in this case, by being enshrined within the bound pages of a book? What does it mean for blog posts written over the course of a prodigious adolescence and young adulthood to be stripped of their original context, then recontextualised as evidence of a young thinker’s quotidian brilliance and evolving ideas about politics, computers and media?

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