Aaron_Swartz.page

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title: Aaron Swartz
format: markdown
categories: notes
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Aaron Swartz seems notable in having worked on [numerous projects](http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/interruptdriven) throughout his lifetime. In addition, he has connections to many different groups, including [GiveWell](http://blog.givewell.org/2013/01/16/in-memory-of-aaron-swartz/), [LessWrong](http://lesswrong.com/user/aaronsw/overview/), reddit, Creative Commons (and thus the free content movement), the Free Software Foundation (and thus the free software movement), the [Digital rights]() movement, [unschooling](https://web.archive.org/web/20010415015213/http://swartzfam.com/aaron/school/), and more. In other words, understanding how and why he chose the projects he worked on could provide insight into prioritizing causes.

- [List of domains owned by Swartz](https://gist.github.com/Cameron-D/4516909)
- [Slate article on Swartz's life](http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2013/02/aaron_swartz_he_wanted_to_save_the_world_why_couldn_t_he_save_himself.html); covers many of the most important projects he worked on. The article also contains a timeline of some of the projects he worked on.

    > What was Aaron Swartz’s work worth, in the end? Half the websites
    > he created as a child are defunct. They now exist only as ghosts,
    > cached and stored by Brewster Kahle’s Internet Archive. The Info
    > Network is gone. The Chicago Force Star Wars fan club has changed
    > its website. RSS 1.0 has fallen out of use; soon after its
    > release, it was eclipsed by the competing RSS 2.0 standard. Both
    > of these were in turn outdone by a new format called
    > [Atom](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atom_%28standard%29). Infogami
    > flopped. Jottit flopped. Reddit only became popular years after
    > Swartz left. The funding for watchdog.net didn't get renewed. The
    > Semantic Web never caught on.