Aaron Swartz is a teenage writer, coder, and hacker. He was a finalist for the ArsDigita Prize for excellence in building non-commercial web sites at the age of 13. At 14 he co-authored the RSS 1.0 specification, now used by thousands of sites to notify their readers of updates. He's a member of the W3C's RDF Core Working Group which is developing the format for the Semantic Web and Metadata Advisor to the Creative Commons. He's also the author of rss2email, xmltramp, HTML diff, and html2text. [More...]
I think deeply about things and want others to do likewise. I work for ideas and learn from people. I don't like excluding people. I'm a perfectionist, but I won't let that get in the way of publication. Except for education and entertainment, I'm not going to waste my time on things that won't have an impact. I try to be friends with everyone, but I hate it when you don't take me seriously. I don't hold grudges (it's not productive) but I learn from my experience. I want to make the world a better place.
I have heroes. I believe in good and bad. I support free software and limited copyright. I fight laws that restrict what bits I can put on my website. Politically, I'm lower-left (-5.50, -7.69 as of 2003-08-23) (huh?) but I enjoy any well-thought-out political views. I'm a pacifist. I don't believe in the science-humanities schism. I want to be an artist. I have several annoying habits: I misremember things and misestimate the accuracy of my memory; I assume I am right, even in areas I don't know much about; and I misleadingly answer personal questions when I think a more truthful answer would cause confusion or strife. More: Weblog, School, Photos, Movies, Attic, Stuff.
Interests: law, politics, and technology. Hobbies: news/journalism, media reviews.
from Aaron's Weblog
Miller and Brock
Is the New York Times any better than the Republican rags? They seem to act the same.
Conservative Losers
Progressives want to move the country forward, making things better for its inhabitants and the world. Conservatives want to take…
Brown and Goodridge
Today is quite a day. Fifty years ago today, the US Supreme Court ruled that the Constitution required integrated schools….
Completely Outrageous
Bush runs an ad which says that Kerry voted against “Apache Helicopters, Tomahawk Cruise Missiles,” as well as “Bradley Fighting…
I Hate Books
A new type of book seems to be crowding the shelves. It’s the kind where Joe wanted people to know…
Contact
I greatly prefer email (PGP key). I try to answer all my email but currently I'm struggling. If it's important or time-sensitive, don't hesitate to send it again if I'm not answering in time. I'd prefer not to use the phone. If you have some reason you want to call me, please warn me first by email.
I don't get out as much as I'd like, but here are my current travel plans:
- Places I've been...
- April 22: CFP2004 and Stanford Admit Weekend.
- September 2004: I'm planning go to school at Stanford.
I'd love to come see you if you'll pay for my expenses.
Projects
I'm starting with a clean slate in 2004. I'm not sure what I'm going to work on, but if I promise to do anything for anybody, I'll try to keep track of it here.
Education: crypto and reverse engineering (ala Felten), SICP (ala MIT), Physics (ala Feynman), Constitutional Law (ala Volokh, with Bernstein and Barnett), Piano (with GarageBand)
Code: Creative Commons sherlock?, wiki project, politech project (with Derek Willis).
Writing: Periodic updates of my weblog and the Google Weblog. I'm also doing some Google tech editing.
Administerial: Submitting RDF media type RFC. Answering email.