Rhetorical. Digital. Political.

Rethinking PRISM AgainWhen I first heard of the NSA’s PRISM, I...

Mon, 10 Jun 2013 21:19:32 -0400

Rethinking PRISM Again

When I first heard of the NSA’s PRISM, I was repulsed. If there were ever anything that sounded…

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The Revolution will not be … real? (inspired by...

Fri, 07 Jun 2013 13:28:39 -0400

The Revolution will not be … real? (inspired by @saracritchfield at #pdf13)

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Cooperative civic technologies

Thu, 06 Jun 2013 16:57:56 -0400

A recent article by the Atlantic’s Anu Partanen on Finland’s education system has made me think about the value of competition.[ref]I’ve written before about how my family’s board gameshave made me think more about the relationship between cooperation and…

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28 academic/muckraking/scholarly studies that say it’s not all...

Tue, 04 Jun 2013 22:34:41 -0400

28 academic/muckraking/scholarly studies that say it’s not all the poor’s fault

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"It’s time to come into the light and, in the grand tradition of civil disobedience, declare our..."

Sat, 19 Jan 2013 00:37:44 -0500

“It’s time to come into the light and, in the grand tradition of civil disobedience, declare our opposition to this private theft of public culture.
We need to take information, wherever it is stored, make our copies and share them with the world. We need to take stuff that’s out of copyright and add it to the archive. We need to buy secret databases and put them on the Web. We need to download scientific journals and upload them to file sharing networks. We need to fight for Guerilla Open Access.
With enough of us, around the world, we’ll not just send a strong message opposing the privatization of knowledge — we’ll make it a thing of the past. Will you join us?”

- Aaron Swartz (via luccica)

O'Reilly giving away ebook "Open Government" as a tribute to Aaron Swartz

Sat, 19 Jan 2013 00:35:30 -0500

O'Reilly giving away ebook "Open Government" as a tribute to Aaron Swartz:

illogical-vulcan:

Open Government was published in 2010 by O'Reilly Media. The United States had just elected a president in 2008, who, on his first day in office, issued an executive order committing his administration to "an unprecedented level of openness in government." The contributors of Open Government had long fought for transparency and openness in government, as well as access to public information. Aaron Swartz was one of these contributors (Chapter 25: When is Transparency Useful?). Aaron was a hacker, an activist, a builder, and a respected member of the technology community. O'Reilly Media is making Open Government free to all to access in honor of Aaron. #PDFtribute -- Tim O'Reilly, January 15, 2013

The Impossible Girl: A Pledge To Make The World That Wouldn't Have Killed Him:

Sat, 19 Jan 2013 00:34:36 -0500

The Impossible Girl: A Pledge To Make The World That Wouldn't Have Killed Him::

kimboekbinder:

Because I find myself profoundly affected by the death of someone I didn’t know - Aaron Swartz, activist and inspiring human - I have decided to pledge here, publicly, my intention to work towards a just world.

Because I know the terrible dissonance of seeing a world of beautiful possibly overlaid so closely atop the actual world. I know the pain of seeing how a few definitive actions could turn the cold, cruel world into a world where suffering is diminished rather than tolerated or encouraged.

Because power in the form of physical wealth, health, and knowledge is kept from those who need it most and I believe there is a moral imperative for those of us with more (wealth, health, knowledge) to help those of us with less.

Because I cannot abide living idly while violence (physical, financial, or political) is still considered the best way to prove who is correct.

Because those with power abuse it to their own personal gain.

Because curiosity should be rewarded, cherished, and regarded as the best of traits.

I pledge to share my knowledge.

I pledge to hold accountable those in power.

I pledge to speak up about racism, sexism, ageism, and homophobia: to counter bigotry and hatred where I find it. And to allow others mistakes, and help them understand how they are being hurtful.

I pledge to not let fear, cynicism, and apathy guide me.

I pledge to be an activist every day.

I pledge to make the world that wouldn’t have killed him.

Photo

Fri, 18 Jan 2013 09:42:52 -0500

book use: Aaron Swartz ~ Speaking Truth to Power

Fri, 18 Jan 2013 09:42:32 -0500

book use: Aaron Swartz ~ Speaking Truth to Power:

bookuse:

An Aaron Swartz reader assembled by Bob Stein:

http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2013/01/speaking_truth_to_power.html

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/5004729/speaking-truth-to-power.pdf

“I’ve spent much of the past 24 hours reading remembrances of Aaron Swartz as well as a wide selection of his own writing.

We’ve lost an important voice. Not only was he uniquely able to wrap his head around the vast complexity of the emerging digital landscape, Aaron Swartz was generous and brave. He threatened the keepers of the status quo and paid the ultimate price.

Depending on how history turns out, Aaron Swartz may be the first hero of our future age.

For people not familiar with Aaron or the brilliance of his expansive mind I’ve assembled a collection of writings by and about Aaron Swartz.” ~ Bob Stein

thepeoplesrecord: One of many ways to pay tribute to the...

Fri, 18 Jan 2013 09:41:54 -0500

thepeoplesrecord:

One of many ways to pay tribute to the amazing life of Aaron Swartz, champion hacktivist/humanist and immensely influential guardian of internet freedom
January 17, 2013

If you are a scientist, you can pay the best and most effective tribute to the memory of Aaron Swartz by sharing PDFs of your published work on pdftribute.net via the hashtag #pdftribute on Twitter.

Researchers are now offering open-access versions of their work using this hashtag.

I also suggest to boycott the pay-walled journals of the science mafia and publish on arXiv, or one of the many excellent open access science journals like PLoS andeLife. Hit them in the wallet where it hurts; it is the only effective way to protest.

New Scientist | Hundreds of researchers have been sharing PDFs of their work on Twitter as a tribute to Aaron Swartz, the internet freedom activist who committed suicide on Friday.

Swartz was facing hacking charges from the U.S. government after accessing the network of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and downloading nearly 5 million articles from the digital library JSTOR.

In a statement following his death, Swartz’s parents criticized the Massachusetts U.S. attorney’s office for pursuing charges against their son, and MIT for failing to support him. [NOTE: see also Time | Aaron Swartz’s Suicide Prompts MIT Soul-Searching.]

Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the world wide web, tweeted his own tribute: “Aaron dead. World wanderers, we have lost a wise elder. Hackers for right, we are one down. Parents all, we have lost a child. Let us weep.”

Update Jan. 15, 2013: ars technica | On Monday afternoon, a group of online archivists released the “Aaron Swartz Memorial JSTOR Liberator.” The initiative is a JavaScript-based bookmarklet that lets Internet users “liberate” an article, already in the public domain, from the online academic archive JSTOR. By running the script — which is limited to once per browser — a public domain academic article is downloaded to the user’s computer, then uploaded back to ArchiveTeam in a small act of protest against JSTOR’s restrictive policies.

Source

We are all Aaron Swartz

Thu, 17 Jan 2013 16:39:22 -0500

I’ve scoured the internet for the past week reading anything and everything I can about Aaron Swartz. He was a brilliant activist and internet hacker who committed suicide just days before he went to trial for the crime some compare to “checking out too many library books at once.”

Aaron Swartz was far more than a file-downloader. He was an open access jedi, a fighter for equality, and an optimistic reformer. He still saw the good in our political and cultural systems and threw himself into improving them.

The immediate and heartfelt response to his passing surprised me because of the number of places it came from. Those mourning his death include scholars and hackers, columnists and academics, activists and lawyers. He had a hand in so many innovative ideas and helped out so many causes, it is clear his wisdom will be missed.

As I’ve gotten to know more about his life through reading his own words and the words of those mourning his death, I’ve pulled together a selection of insights by and about him. I will post these at the blog linked to below starting tomorrow, January 18th, the one year anniversary of the anti-SOPA protests (which Swartz helped orchestrate). Some have suggested this day be known as Aaron Swartz day to celebrate his legacy.

http://weareaaronswartz.tumblr.com/

The more I’ve learned about this man, the more the activist and geek in me can’t stop thinking about what to do next. I hope we do honor him with “Aaron Swartz Day,” but I also hope his legacy lives on, even stronger than he could have imagined, as we join his fight for meaningful systemic reforms.

We are all Aaron Swartz

Sat, 12 Jan 2013 23:43:00 -0500

Aaron Swartz. Here’s a man who took advantage of all the democratizing potential of the internet, regularly standing at the edge of freedom fighting off oppression, and winning. He believed in the freedom of information and in empowering the people even when the entrenched interests had other plans. I wonder if we can best honor his memory by making him a rallying cry, a unifying force to fight corruption wherever it may be found.

From Tim Lee:

I worry that Swartz’s prosecution is a sign that America is gradually losing the sense of humor that has made it the home of the world’s innovators and misfits. A generation ago, we hailed Pentagon Papers leaker Daniel Ellsberg as a hero. Today, our government throws the book at whistleblowers for leaking much less consequential information.

Our nation’s growing humorlessness won’t just mean that insubordinate idealists like Swartz lose their freedom or their lives. As our culture becomes steadily less accepting of people with Swartz’s irreverant attitude toward authority, we’ll all be poorer as a result. Revolutionary new technologies and ideas don’t come from people with a reverence for following the rules. They come from iconoclasts like Jobs, Wozniak, and Swartz. It’s a bad idea to lock them up and throw away the key.

From Glenn Greenwald

Swartz’s activism … was waged as part of one of the most vigorously contested battles - namely, the war over how the internet is used and who controls the information that flows on it - and that was his real crime in the eyes of the US government: challenging its authority and those of corporate factions to maintain a stranglehold on that information.

…

That’s a major part of why I consider him heroic. He wasn’t merely sacrificing himself for a cause. It was a cause of supreme importance to people and movements around the world - internet freedom - and he did it by knowingly confronting the most powerful state and corporate factions because he concluded that was the only way to achieve these ends.

…

Whatever else is true, Swartz was destroyed by a “justice” system that fully protects the most egregious criminals as long as they are members of or useful to the nation’s most powerful factions, but punishes with incomparable mercilessness and harshness those who lack power and, most of all, those who challenge power.

From Cory Doctorow:

Aaron had an unbeatable combination of political insight, technical skill, and intelligence about people and issues. I think he could have revolutionized American (and worldwide) politics. His legacy may still yet do so.

From Lawrence Lessig:

Aaron had literally done nothing in his life “to make money.” He was fortunate Reddit turned out as it did, but from his work building the RSS standard, to his work architecting Creative Commons, to his work liberating public records, to his work building a free public library, to his work supporting Change Congress/FixCongressFirst/Rootstrikers, and then Demand Progress, Aaron was always and only working for (at least his conception of) the public good. He was brilliant, and funny. A kid genius.

From Peter Eckersley:

Aaron did more than almost anyone to make the Internet a thriving ecosystem for open knowledge, and to keep it that way. His contributions were numerous, and some of them were indispensable… . While his methods were provocative, the goal that Aaron died fighting for — freeing the publicly-funded scientific literature from a publishing system that makes it inaccessible to most of those who paid for it — is one that we should all support.

From Quinn Norton:

Aaron was a boy, not big, who cast a shadow across the world.

Update: Added Doctorow and Norton

switchyourbank: - Source

Wed, 09 Jan 2013 16:32:06 -0500

switchyourbank:

- Source

current: Susan B. Anthony

Fri, 21 Dec 2012 08:49:36 -0500

current:

Susan B. Anthony

jenbekmanprojectsaustinkleon.com Austin Kleon is a writer and...

Sat, 28 Jul 2012 16:50:36 -0400

jenbekmanprojects
austinkleon.com

Austin Kleon is a writer and artist living in Austin, Texas. He’s the author of Steal Like An Artist and Newspaper Blackout. Read more→

Steal like an artist http://tumblr.austinkleon.com/post/24971992896

Made with Paper

Thu, 28 Jun 2012 22:19:10 -0400

Made with Paper

JustinWolfers: Survey of leading economis

Wed, 27 Jun 2012 10:21:21 -0400

JustinWolfers: Survey of leading economis:

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The laffer curve has died. So sad.

"Still today, we humanists shudder at incompleteness, protecting our ideas from the public, polishing..."

Sat, 16 Jun 2012 19:51:27 -0400

“Still today, we humanists shudder at incompleteness, protecting our ideas from the public, polishing them toward perfection in the private confines of the library or the book lined study. We prefer the silence of these spaces, nurturing our ideas until everything is said just right. Only then are we prepared, reluctantly, to reveal them to the world.”

- Wonders & Marvels – A Community for Curious Minds who love History, its Odd Stories, and Good Reads

An attempt to suggest how humanities scholarship can be more public and collaborative.
(via cplong)

Photo

Wed, 06 Jun 2012 13:52:27 -0400

"Tell that to a plant, how dangerous carbon dioxide is."

Mon, 12 Mar 2012 20:19:51 -0400

“Tell that to a plant, how dangerous carbon dioxide is.”

- Rick Santorum calling climate science bogus. (via officialssay)