What would society and the world look like if Aaron Swartz hadn't died?
I just rewatched "The Internet's Own Boy" (documentary about Swartz). Looking at the world now with everything from increased surveillance (both digital and real-world), modern algorithmic platforms feeding us what will keep us glued to their sites via cues from Ai... And more knowledge, information and power consolidated in fewer hands, I can't help but think of what Swartz might have accomplished and how things would look if he were still around.
One tragic irony I noticed is that we're currently seeing Ai being given the keys to regular people's private messages on giant social media platforms under the auspices of 'training Ai' on large, real-world, unfiltered, unguarded datasets, but this is the very thing Swartz was accused of when trying to access publicly available data at MIT from research journals. In the case of Swartz, it was info that was already published, public and publicized, albeit behind corporate administrative paywalls and he faced decades behind bars for daring to download too much info.
But when Ai does it to our own personal, private messages (a violation of the sites own terms and conditions) it's deemed somehow okay...
How might Swartz have influenced these and other issues we're facing today?
On a positive basis we can look at The Files recently released and see the type of progress (access to information/knowledge) he was working towards.
Thoughts?
*Mandatory Photo Credit: "Aaron Swartz - Deceased (Suicide Jan 11, 2013)" by peretzp is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.