Aaron Swartz Was More Than A Nerdy Kid, He Was A True American Patriot And Innovator

Aaron Swartz was more than some nerdy kid from the Chicago suburbs, he was a 21st century American patriot and innovator who cared more for the community around him than he did fame and fortune. Like Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the worldwide web, he wanted everyone to share in his discoveries and innovations when it came to document sharing and when those ideals came under attack he rallied people like Enjolras from Le Miserables to fight back. Calling Swartz a wunderkind of the Internet age would be an understatement. If Steve Jobs and Bill Gates were the Bach and Beethoven of the digital age, Swartz was Mozart. At age 13, Swartz was a won the ArsDigita Prize, a competition for young people who created "useful, educational, and collaborative" web sites. within 18 months, Swartz was collaborating with experts in networking standards as a member of the working group that authored the RSS 1.0 Specification. By the time Swartz turned 20 he had merged his start-up Infogami with Reddit and made millions within months when Reddit was acquired by CondeNet, the parent company of Wired.