Aaron Swartz: 8 Nov 1986 – 11 Jan 2013

A bit late, but I'll pay my own tribute to Aaron Swartz, "the internet's own boy." From the deeply moving documentary drawn from his far too short life, shared freely online, two moments stayed with me in particular.

At 21:00, Aaron compares the limitations of "old broadcast systems," radio and television, which offer only hundreds, or thousands, of channels, with the internet, where everyone can have their own channel: a blog, a Myspace page. Visionary, he's already pointing, in 2007, to the risk of gatekeepers becoming centralised: who controls access to content? Who decides who sees what, and who meets whom? Everyone can speak, but who gets heard?

At 1:23:00, in one of Aaron Swartz's last interviews, a journalist asks him how he sees the fight for the web continuing. He answers right back, not without a touch of mischief, "It's up to you!" Before going on to describe a vision of the internet and the web as a kind of pharmakon. Heads, the possibility of sharing knowledge, of speaking freely. Tails, surveillance technologies, centralisation, repression, control over information. For Aaron, these two sides can only coexist, but it's up to us to tip the balance one way or the other.

It's up to us to carry this fight forward, one that is above all not just a technological fight, but truly an economic, political and philosophical one. RIP Aaron, and thank you.