Dear friends, family and colleagues… when I get annoyed by you for using the label “hacker” in a negative, nonconstructive, anti-productive manner or to refer to malicious adversaries, it is because there are people like Aaron out there who are true examples of what a hacker is… who use their basic, unstoppable curiosity of deeply technical subjects to change power structures in society, in order to address issues of injustice, basic rights and information freedom. He was also one of the only hackers, consider his brilliant direct action tactics against closed profiteering journal databases, who would have been equally at home at an SFT or Ruckus activist camp, as he would at a hackerspace. RIP.
From danny:
Aaron’s art was an amazing ability to focus on the truly important. When he left, just as when Len left, he left an obligation on the rest of us to keep what each of us have of him, and put it to good use. Between us, I believe we still have a massively parallel, distributed version of Aaron, one unique part of his life shared with each of us alone. The part I’ll remember for us is just how funny he was, and how serious change sometimes requires a light touch, and a sense of the absurd.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/01/farewell-aaron-swartz
http://www.oblomovka.com/wp/2013/01/12/he-was-funny/
http://rememberaaronsw.tumblr.com
and for eternity: www.aaronsw.com