He drove the online world forward. He played a major role in defining the way information flows on the internet. His dedication to issues concerning the internet, amongst many others, will be solely missed. This blog post is in memory of Aaron Swartz (1986-2013). Without getting into the messy controversy that surrounds this case of apparent suicide, we thought we’d just remember Mr. Swartz for his brilliant and creative work.

It wasn’t just his skills as a programmer, but rather the manner in which he used them to make knowledge more accessible to the people that defined his personality. Being the co founder of the RSS internet syndication standard at the age of 14 speaks about Aaron’s dedication greatly. He then co founded Reditt, a social entertainment and news website, which was later sold. His work in the latter stages of this life was focused on campaiging for internet freedom which included fighting against the Stop Online Piracy Act amongst many others. Underlining his work and progress in internet activism, was the message that some form of vigilance was needed in the online world, and that restrictions, especially from the goverments, would not be passed silently if we were to have a truly open internet. He fought for the people of the internet, for their voice, for their rights. He fought for the freedom to communicate and share online, something that if curtailed, would be against the Bill of Rights, and The Constitution of The United States and many other nations. He, in a way, reminded us of the basic rights we take for granted everyday, and how important it is to fight for them in this new age of technology which is apparently supposed to bring greater freedom.

As we became aware of Aaron’s death, this topic started doing its rounds on Twitter. Amongst many fellow tweeps expressing their condolences, sharing and remembering his works, we came across a particular project that Aaron took up in his early days as a programmer that took our attention. This project was, of all things, a Twitter conversation viewer. However minor, in the grand scheme of his works, looking at the web service he had created, we felt, well … rather full of mixed emotions. On the one hand we had a smile on our face, looked at each other and felt, what we at Conweets.com aim to do, had already been tried out by the one and only Aaron Swartz in his early years as a web developer. We couldn’t help but feel a slight, only a slight, sense of achievement. We felt proud of providing a service, similar in many ways, which at some point in time even Aaron thought could be useful for the twitter community. This feeling was quickly overwhelmed by that of grief as we again remembered about his struggles which led to his, surely untimely, passing away.

No matter what is said about this case in the future, we all feel extremely devastated about this loss. Its saddening particularly because we all, in some way, see a part of ourselves in him, whether as a person who deeply cares about the freedom of the internet, or as a developer/programmer.