Aaron Swartz left us all a week ago. Itâs strange, I only met Aaron once
at the Internet Archive, and had a handful of conversations with him via
email/irc ⊠but not a day has passed since last Saturday that I havenât
thought about him, and his principled life.
Iâve been asked a few times why Aaron has been on my mind so much, and
Iâve struggled to put it into words. Meanwhile, so many thoughtful
things have been written about him. The arc of his life, his ideals, and
abilities, charisma, and chutzpah, seem larger than life. And yet, he
was just a person, a son, a friend, with people who loved him. Itâs just
heartbreaking.
I work as a software developer in libraryland, trying to bridge the
world of information weâve had with the world we are building on the
Web. So for me, Aaron was a role model, a teacher whose lessons werenât
in textbooks or scholarly journals, but in his blog, in his code, in his
talks, in his experiments with real world results. He was only 26 when
he died, but he was, and remains, as Tim Berners-Lee paradoxically
called
him, a âwise elderâ.
I wanted to write something here, but more than that I wanted to do
something.
I noticed that Internet Archive
created a collection
devoted to online material related to Aaron, and thought I would try to
collect together all the Twitter conversations that mention him.
Twitterâs search is limited to the last week, so I quickly wrote a
command line utility that
pages through search results using their
API,
and writes out the complete data as line-oriented JSON. I also pulled in
the tweets that mention #pdftribute since they were largely inspired by
Aaronâs efforts in the open access space. I packaged up the data using
BagIt and
put it up
at Internet Archive. Hereâs the description from the bag-info.txt
On January 11, 2013 the Internet activist Aaron Swartz took his own
life, and a great deal of grief, anger, and constructive thinking
erupted on the Web and in Twitter. In particular the #pdftribute Twitter
tag was born, in an attempt to raise awareness about Open Access issues,
that Aaron did so much to futher during his life.
This package contains Twitter JSON data for two Twitter search queries
that were collected in the week following Aaronâs death:
-
âAaron Swartzâ OR aaronsw
-
#pdftribute
aaronsw.json.gz contains 630,397 tweets, for the period starting with
2013-01-11 16:50:22 and ending 2013-01-18 13:50:02.
pdftribute.json.gz contains 42,277 tweets, for the period starting with
Jan 13 02:42:26 and ending Jan 17 03:33:46.
In addition the URLs mentioned in the tweets found in aaronsw.tar.gz
were extracted, unshortened, and then aggregated to provide a report of
what people linked to. These URLs are available in aaronsw-urls.txt.gz.
It is hoped that this data will help document the Web communityâs
response to Aaronâs death, and life.
Below is a list of the top 50 links shared in tweets about Aaron. There
were 36,506 in all.
Page
|
Shares
|
RIP,
Aaron Swartz - Boing Boing
|
11763
|
The
Truth about Aaron Swartzâs âCrimeâ « Unhandled Exception
|
6641
|
Aaron Swartz commits
suicide - The Tech
|
5539
|
Remove
United States District Attorney Carmen Ortiz from office for overreach
in the case of Aaron Swartz.
|
6478
|
Prosecutor
as bully - Lessig Blog
|
3738
|
The inspiring heroism of Aaron Swartz | Glenn Greenwald | Comment is
free | guardian.co.uk
|
2522
|
Aaron
Swartz Faced A More Severe Prison Term Than Killers, Slave Dealers And
Bank Robbers | ThinkProgress
|
2367
|
Farewell
to Aaron Swartz, an Extraordinary Hacker and Activist - EFF
|
2042
|
Internet
Activist, a Creator of RSS, Is Dead at 26, Apparently a Suicide - New
York Times
|
1927
|
Aaron Swartz muere
por suicidio a sus 26 años
|
1572
|
Technologyâs
Greatest Minds Say Goodbye to Aaron Swartz
|
1558
|
Aaron Swartz a través de 5 grandes contribuciones a la red
|
1495
|
Aaron
Swartz, American hero
|
1397
|
Internet
Activist Aaron Swartz Commits Suicide
|
1330
|
Anonymous
hacks MIT after Aaron Swartzâs suicide | Internet & Media - CNET
News
|
1327
|
danah
boyd | apophenia » processing the loss of Aaron Swartz
|
1280
|
Official
Statement from the family and partner of Aaron Swartz - Remember Aaron
Swartz
|
1199
|
depression lies
| WIL WHEATON dot NET: 2.0
|
1164
|
BBC News -
Aaron Swartz, internet freedom activist, dies aged 26
|
1143
|
In
the Wake of Aaron Swartzâs Death, Letâs Fix Draconian Computer Crime Law
- EFF
|
1088
|
Westboro
Baptist Church Drops Aaron Swartz Funeral Protest After Anonymous Vows
Action (VIDEO)
|
1079
|
Soup
âą Official Statement from the Family and Partner ofâŠ
|
1067
|
âAaron
was killed by the governmentâ - Robert Swartz on his sonâs death â
RT
|
1066
|
#PDFTribute list of documents
|
1044
|
Internet
prodigy, activist Aaron Swartz commits suicide - CNN.com
|
1009
|
Remembering
Aaron Swartz | The Nation
|
1003
|
If I get hit by a
truckâŠ
|
991
|
Suicide
dâAaron Swartz, activiste Ă lâorigine du format RSS et de Creative
Commons
|
938
|
Hacker,
Activist Aaron Swartz Commits Suicide | ZDNet
|
896
|
Activism
âHow We Stopped SOPAâ by Aaron Swartz (1986-2013)
|
896
|
Muere
a los 26 años el ciberactivista Aaron Swartz | TecnologĂa | EL PAĂS
|
887
|
10
Awful Crimes That Get You Less Prison Time Than What Aaron Swartz Faced
| Alternet
|
868
|
Aaron
Swartz, Coder and Activist, Dead at 26 | Threat Level | Wired.com
|
856
|
How
the Legal System Failed Aaron Swartzâand Us : The New Yorker
|
849
|
https://aaronsw.jottit.com/howtoget
|
811
|
How
Anonymous Got Westboro to Back Off Aaron Swartzâs Funeral - National -
The Atlantic Wire
|
804
|
Muerte de Aaron Swartz: la necesidad del Open Data en el I+D
|
779
|
US
court drops charges on Aaron Swartz days after his suicide â RT
|
772
|
Researchers
begin posting article PDFs to twitter in #pdftribute to Aaron Swartz «
Neuroconscience
|
745
|
My Aaron Swartz, whom
I loved. | Quinn Said
|
742
|
The inspiring heroism of Aaron Swartz | Glenn Greenwald | Comment is
free | guardian.co.uk
|
713
|
Government
formally drops charges against Aaron Swartz | Ars Technica
|
708
|
Aaron
Swartzâs Politics « naked capitalism
|
704
|
CNN.com - Breaking News, U.S., World,
Weather, Entertainment & Video News
|
690
|
After
Aaron Swartz: The Tech World Must Talk About Depression
|
670
|
JSTOR
liberator
|
663
|
Internet
Activist Aaron Swartz Commits Suicide
|
661
|
Anonymous tumba las webs del MIT y DOJ como tributo a Aaron Swartz
|
652
|
Anonymous
Hacks MIT, Leaves Farewell Message for Aaron Swartz
|
647
|
There were 209,839 Twitter users that mentioned Aaron on Twitter in the
last week. I was one of them. I wish I couldâve done more to help.