The Idealist: Aaron Swartz and the Rise of Free Culture on the Internet
Written by Justin Peters
Narrated by Corey Brill
3.5/5
()
About this audiobook
Aaron Swartz was a zealous young advocate for the free exchange of information and creative content online. He committed suicide in 2013 after being indicted by the government for illegally downloading millions of academic articles from a nonprofit online database. From the age of fifteen, when Swartz, a computer prodigy, worked with Lawrence Lessig to launch Creative Commons, to his years as a fighter for copyright reform and open information, to his work leading the protests against the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), to his posthumous status as a cultural icon, Swartz’s life was inextricably connected to the free culture movement. Now Justin Peters examines Swartz’s life in the context of 200 years of struggle over the control of information.
In vivid, accessible prose, The Idealist situates Swartz in the context of other “data moralists” past and present, from lexicographer Noah Webster to ebook pioneer Michael Hart to NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. In the process, the book explores the history of copyright statutes and the public domain; examines archivists’ ongoing quest to build the “library of the future”; and charts the rise of open access, the copyleft movement, and other ideologies that have come to challenge protectionist intellectual property policies. Peters also breaks down the government’s case against Swartz and explains how we reached the point where federally funded academic research came to be considered private property, and downloading that material in bulk came to be considered a federal crime.
The Idealist is “an excellent survey of the intellectual property battlefield, and a sobering memorial to its most tragic victim” (The Boston Globe) and an essential look at the impact of the free culture movement on our daily lives and on generations to come.
Justin Peters
Justin Peters is a correspondent for Slate and a contributing editor at the Columbia Journalism Review. He has written for various national publications, including The New York Times, The Washington Monthly, and Travel + Leisure, and was the founding editor of Polite, a general-interest print journal. An alumnus of Cornell University and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, he divides his time between Boston and Brooklyn.
Related to The Idealist
Related audiobooks
Silicon Values: The Future of Free Speech Under Surveillance Capitalism Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Twittering Machine Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Manipulators: Facebook, Google, Twitter, and Big Tech's War on Conservatives Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBlack Software: The Internet & Racial Justice, from the AfroNet to Black Lives Matter Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHow Not to Network a Nation: The Uneasy History of the Soviet Internet (Information Policy) Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Hacker Crackdown: Law and Disorder on the Electronic Frontier Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Live Work Work Work Die: A Journey into the Savage Heart of Silicon Valley Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Data and Goliath: The Hidden Battles to Capture Your Data and Control Your World Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Weaving the Web Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Artificial Unintelligence: How Computers Misunderstand the World Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Lurking: How a Person Became a User Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Obfuscation: A User's Guide for Privacy and Protest Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I Hate the Internet Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Misinformation Age: How False Beliefs Spread Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Ghost Work: How to Stop Silicon Valley from Building a New Global Underclass Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Snowden's Box: Trust in the Age of Surveillance Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Future Histories: What Ada Lovelace, Tom Paine, and the Paris Commune Can Teach Us About Digital Technology Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Fuzzy and the Techie: Why the Liberal Arts Will Rule the Digital World Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Biography of the Pixel Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBorn Digital: The Story of a Distracted Generation Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5What Algorithms Want: Imagination in the Age of Computing Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Silicon States: The Power and Politics of Big Tech and What It Means for Our Future Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Spam Nation: The Inside Story of Organized Cybercrime—from Global Epidemic to Your Front Door Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Who Owns the Future? Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5New Dark Age: Technology and the End of the Future Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Technically Wrong: Sexist Apps, Biased Algorithms, and Other Threats of Toxic Tech Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy: The Many Faces of Anonymous Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5LikeWar: The Weaponization of Social Media Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Worm: The First Digital World War Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Technology & Engineering For You
Elon Musk Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Death of Expertise: The Campaign Against Established Knowledge and Why it Matters Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Four Battlegrounds: Power in the Age of Artificial Intelligence Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Knowing What We Know: The Transmission of Knowledge: From Ancient Wisdom to Modern Magic Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Ransomware Hunting Team: A Band of Misfits' Improbable Crusade to Save the World from Cybercrime Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Design of Everyday Things Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Grunt: The Curious Science of Humans at War Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Stuff Matters: Exploring the Marvelous Materials That Shape Our Man-made World Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Mini Farming: Self-Sufficiency on 1/4 Acre Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5When the Heavens Went on Sale: The Misfits and Geniuses Racing to Put Space Within Reach Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Innovator's Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Future of Geography: How the Competition in Space Will Change Our World Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Extremely Online: The Untold Story of Fame, Influence, and Power on the Internet Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Knowledge: How to Rebuild Our World from Scratch Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Smart Phone Dumb Phone: Free Yourself from Digital Addiction Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Battle for Your Brain: Defending the Right to Think Freely in the Age of Neurotechnology Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Path Between the Seas: The Creation of the Panama Canal, 1870-1914 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The End of the River Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This Is What It Sounds Like: What the Music You Love Says About You Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Island of the Lost: Shipwrecked at the Edge of the World Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Death in Mud Lick: A Coal Country Fight Against the Drug Companies that Delivered the Opioid Epidemic Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Path Between the Seas Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Fallout: The Hiroshima Cover-up and the Reporter Who Revealed It to the World Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Consider the Fork: A History of How We Cook and Eat Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
Related categories
Reviews for The Idealist
15 ratings0 reviews