What The Internet Did To Aaron Swartz

On his third day at Stanford, Aaron Swartz forced himself to attend a party. He wasn’t interested in having a good time—in fact, crowds of strangers made him anxious. He merely wanted to document the mating rituals of the “teenager,” a species that alternatively mystified and horrified him.

“In my culture (of vaguely technical people), people converse by sharing information through mutually-beneficial discussion and debate,” Swartz wrote on his blog, “but the teenager’s system is altogether different and wholly alien to me.” It also struck him as irrational. The teenagers interacted through soundless, spastic movements known as dancing. When they opened their mouths, it was to enact a custom the non-scientist would recognize as flirting. “The protocol begins by sharing basic personal information to establish identity, then moves to the humorous recitation of cultural information,” he explained.

To Swartz, practically everything at Stanford needed fixing, and not just the way the students related to one another. The school’s ID cards were intrusive (“It even has a RFID transmitter in it, so they can track us while we walk”). The library was a disaster (“books with catalog numbers starting with P are on floor W4, those starting with PA through PZ are on floor W6. Yes, that’s right, W6”). By his tenth day, Swartz had even grown suspicious of the washing machines. “I’d guess that the process removed microscopic germs,” he wrote, “except for the fact that germs only thrive in damp, warm environments.” He dropped out before his sophomore year.

For the rest of the story: http://www.newrepublic.com/article/112485/aaron-swartz-profile-internet-will-never-save-you#