I'm furious, but my target is not the legal system or the idiots who bullied Swartz. I despise them, yes, but there's a bigger target that might be causing way more harm here.
I was writing this big text about it, but there wasn't really much concrete information in it. It feels like the media's lack of action, in light of the current movement and near-martyrdom status Swartz has gained now that the public media jumped on the news of the suicide and spread it all over the ball we live on, is partly to blame.
All the counterfactuals ran through my head when I read about this. Basically, Swartz was fighting for access to information, in a manner that apparently broke no laws or rules he could have been aware of, and it turned out to be the lack of public awareness about his case, and his lack of information on how the public and his friends would react and support him, that probably contributed the most to whatever complicated thing happened in his mind to make him end his life.
(ETA: It looks like other people are also picking up on this (linked article made #1 on HackerNews at time of edit), so yeah, media and information issues.)
Because of shitty broken social systems, the news of his death are contributing more to his life goals than the news of his life. Think about this. For him, dying turned out to be more effective than living.
This should not be.
For him, dying turned out to be more effective than living. This should not be.
Er, why not? Certainly continued life is preferable to death, but it's not a terminal value, is it?
Link
One of us is no more.
He deserves a eulogy more eloquent than what I am capable of writing. Here's Cory Doctorow's, one of his long time friends.
It's a sad world in which you are being arrested and grand jury'd for downloading scientific journals and papers with the intent to share them.