Category Archives: Announcements

Aaron's Writings, Announcements, Raw Thought at The DNA Lounge, Remembering Aaron

The Next “Raw Thought” Announced for January 11 at the DNA Lounge

Update December 23, 2018:

Yes, January 11th is the anniversary of Aaron’s death, but rather than to just say a few words and be sad, as is often the case on this blog every year, we are going to use the opportunity to raise awareness about his case and build out our community a bit, while everyone is paying attention. Our discussion will be from 7:30-9pm at the DNA Lounge – vegan pizza will be served. Email us at aaronswartzday@gmail.com or tweet/DM @AaronSwartzDay if you are interested in coming to our little info-filled dinner session from 7:30-9pm. RSVP required.

During our Aaron Swartz Day weekend in November (and around the world), many people came to meet others who care about helping the world and to learn from each other *even though they don’t know a lot about Aaron himself*.

Folks often learn more details about Aaron, what happened to him, and all of his various cool projects and causes *after they get there* – and I ended up wishing I had provided some introductory material to them before the conference.

So, this year, more than ever, it seemed important to bring his messages to a larger audience, with something positive to offer – even on this saddest of days coming up (January 11).

We hope no one is offended by our having a dance night on this day; and felt it best to explain our reasoning, just in case: We have a lot of work to do and it’s best to keep up our momentum from November’s event.

Thank you.

****original post below from December 12, 2018***

Raw Thought is a monthly dance event at the Above DNA Lounge – with a big room in front and a Psychedelic Chill Room in back, and DJs going, simultaneously, in both, from 10pm-2am.

Also featured are freshly generated, mind bending visuals courtesy of Projekt Seahorse. (Here’s a clip of Projekt Seahorse performing with Tha Spyryt at the Internet Archive from November 10, 2018.)

Raw Thought was the name of Aaron’s prolific blog, and one of the main goals of these events – besides providing a great place to meet people and dance – is to continue to spread Aaron’s knowledge and ideas to a larger audience.

In the fall of 2018, a group of Aaron Swartz-inspired DJs circling Noisebridge convinced us to have a dance night at the DNA Lounge in celebration of Aaron as an “Opening Night Party” to our Sixth Annual Aaron Swartz Day.

As a result, November 9, 2018 became the historic date of the very first “Raw Thought at the DNA Lounge.” (Here’s Tha Spyryt’s set from that night!) It was so awesome we all decided to keep doing it, once a month, in 2019.

The next Raw Thought is Friday, January 11, 2019, from 10pm-2am.

Each Raw Thought features the sounds of the “Raw Thought Crew” – Six DJs with varying styles and flavors; all very experimental and progressive in nature. Some of them have more than one persona :)

Mochipet                               Melotronix                               Tha Spyryt

mangangs                          Ailz – Ozlo Glowing                 Cain MacWitish

Live visuals by Projekt Seahorse

Raw Thought at the DNA Lounge happens every second Friday:

January 11      –      February 8      –      March 8      –      April 12

Raw Thought is every second Friday at the DNA Lounge.

Next show January 11, 2019. See you next year!

 

Aaron Swartz Day 2018 - Projects, Aaron Swartz International Hackathon 2018, Announcements, Opening Night Party

Be An Aaron Swarz Day Volunteer (and Get You and 2 Friends In Free)

This is for the San Francisco hackathon and opening night party.

TICKETS

We’re training volunteers every Friday at the Internet Archive, leading up to our November 9-11 event.

We need folks from everything from taking tickets to being a back up sound person, runners, hackathon & reception set up and break down and much much more. Get some experience and learn about what goes on behind the scenes.

Plus if you volunteer for part of Saturday or Sunday you’ll get yourself and two friends in for free. ^_^

If you are interested, please write us at aaronswartzday@gmail.com by Wednesday at 11am, each week, to reserve a spot.

Okay hope to see you Friday :) (And be sure to RSVP :)

To be clear: these volunteers are for the San Francisco Hackathon & Evening Event, and also for our Opening Night Party at the DNA Lounge.

(Below! Just announced!)

Thanks!!

 

 

Aaron Swartz Day 2018, Aaron Swartz International Hackathon 2018, Announcements, Art, Internet Archive, Music, Virtual Reality

Early Bird Passes Now Available For This Year’s San Francisco Event

New! Saturday’s Hackathon Schedule!

(From left to right) (Top Row) Aaron Swartz, Cindy Cohn, Brewster Kahle, (Bottom row) Barrett Brown, DJ Spooky

Get your “Early Bird All Access Pass” Here

After Tuesday August 14th at Midnight, Get your Tickets here

These Early Bird Passes are only available until midnight on August 15th.

Hello everyone in Aaron Swartz Day-land. We are expecting a full house this year for our San Francisco Hackathon and subsequent Reception & Evening Event. This will be our largest event to date, and many of our speakers are flying in from out of town.

For these reasons, in order to supplement our finances for this year’s grand extravaganza, we have decided to sell some “Early Bird All Access” Passes.

So, until midnight on August 15th, you can buy an “Early Bird All Access Pass” for only $20! (For up to 100 passes, while they last.)

Each “Early Bird All Access Pass” Includes:

1) Admission to both days of the Hackathon ($25 value) (Don’t panic. No one will be turned away for lack of funds. See the note at the bottom of this announcement :)

2) Admission to Reception and Evening Event ($50 Value)

3) Admission to After Party – 10:30 pm-2am ($20 Value) – Location TBD

8pm – Evening Event – Special Guests Speaking or Performing (or both):

DJ Spooky (Multimedia Artist, DJ/Musician, Author, Historian, Educator)

Barrett Brown (Author of the upcoming book: My Glorious Defeats: Hacktivist, Narcissist, Anonymous: A Memoir, Pursuance Project, Journalist, Former Political Prisoner)

Lisa Rein (Aaron Swartz Day, Creative Commons, The Swartz-Manning VR Destination, ASD Police Surveillance Project, ASD Solar Survival Project)

Daniel Rigmaiden (Cell Phone Surveillance Expert, Exposed Stingray to the Public)

Cindy Cohn (Electronic Frontier Foundation)

Brewster Kahle (Internet Archive)

Steve Phillips (Pursuance Project, Noisebridge)

Mek Karpeles (Open Library, Internet Archive)

Plus More Special Guests – We will be making daily updates here!

HACKATHON INFORMATION:

Saturday & Sunday – 10am – 6pm

New This Year: On site VR, Robotics & 3-D Printing Demonstrations.

Hackathon Speakers Confirmed So Far (Many more coming):

Barrett Brown (Author of the upcoming book: My Glorious Defeats: Hacktivist, Narcissist, Anonymous: A Memoir, Pursuance Project, Journalist, Former Political Prisoner)

Steve Phillips (Pursuance Project, Noisebridge)

Cyrus Farivar (Author of “Habeus Data,” Technology Journalist, & Radio Producer)

Daniel Rigmaiden (Cell Phone Surveillance Expert, Exposed Stingray to the Public)

Tracey Jaquith (Internet Archive)

Tracy Rosenberg (Oakland Privacy.net, Media Alliance)

Dave Maass (Electronic Frontier Foundation)

Matteo Borri (Robots Everywhere LLC, NASA (Mars Rover Contractor), ASD Solar Survival Project)

Lisa Rein (Aaron Swartz Day, Creative Commons, The Swartz-Manning VR Destination, ASD Police Surveillance Project, ASD Solar Survival Project)

Mek Karpeles (Open Library, Internet Archive)

Get your “Early Bird All Access Pass” Here

After Tuesday, August 14th at Midnight, TICKETS HERE

Above: Lisa Rein and Barrett Brown at San Francisco’s Noisebridge Hackerspace.

As always, please write aaronswartzday@gmail.com if you need a free ticket. There are student discounts too, but you need to write us first to get the code.

 

Announcements, Internet Archive, Remembering Aaron, Remembering John Perry Barlow, Transcripts

A Little Note About All John Perry Stuff We’ve Been Publishing Lately

Hey you guys! We hope you know that you are not expected to read all of this John Perry Barlow Syposium content at once. On the contrary: there is so much of it because it’s not going to matter until later: when someone is researching that particular topic, about something relevant, happening in the present.

These posts are not about John Perry Barlow as much as they are discussing relevant questions about the future of our movement and our world.

Yes siree, we here at Aaron Swartz Day are into the present, and protecting the rights of living people. Not wallowing around in the shadows and sadness of the past; unless those shadows cast light on a current topic.

It was one of the requirements of Aaron’s family and friends that these events be celebrations and calls to action. (Although it’s important to continue to spread awareness about what happened to Aaron, as we keep learning.)

Why is it so important to look back on these and all events? Because, unfortunately, history tends to repeat itself. Not knowing that an idea has already been tried, and would have worked except for that one thing, is, potentially, our strength and their greatest weakness.

When they divide us, we are less likely to share this kind of information with each other. That’s why we need to share this kind of information with everybody constantly.

Our only hope is to index the truth faster than the powers that be can whitewash it.

Again, these indexes are for the future. Believe us, they will come in handy. Our archivists have learned from past experience: It’s a lot easier to index the present while you’re in it. And the inaccurate associations that historians often draw is a testament to that.

Plus how often is it that you get to index a historical time period while you are living it? That is the position that the Aaron Swartz Day team has found itself in. (That’s what our main partner, Internet Archive, tries to do on a daily basis.)

Alas, it would appear we have to fight many of the battles over again that we worked so hard on in the past. Net Neutrality, the First Amendment, and having control of our own bodies, just to name a few.

So, hang in there, as the content starts flying out, over these next few weeks and months.  It might not seem like everything is connected at first, but it is.

Aaron Swartz Day 2018, Announcements, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Internet Archive, Remembering John Perry Barlow

Big Weekend At The Internet Archive – John Perry Barlow Symposium and AGI & Corporations Seminar

We wanted to make sure that everyone knew about two important events happening this weekend at the Internet Archive.

The first is a John Perry Barlow Symposium from 2pm-6pm – which we think might actually be better than an old fashioned memorial :-)

THIS EVENT IS SOLD OUT, BUT YOU CAN WATCH THE LIVESTREAM HERE: https://eff.org/ArchiveYouTube

Much like Aaron Swartz Day, rather than simply mourn the loss of our friend, the Internet Archive is taking this opportunity to discuss and promote many of the ideals that John Perry stood for, with some speakers that knew him well, so that we can carry on working in his name:

Edward Snowden, noted whistleblower and President of Freedom of the Press Foundation

Cindy Cohn, Executive Director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation

Cory Doctorow, celebrated scifi author and Editor in Chief of Boing Boing

Joi Ito, Director of the MIT Media Lab

John Gilmore, EFF Co-founder, Board Member, entrepreneur and technologist

Trevor Timm, Executive Director of Freedom of the Press

Shari Steele, Executive Director of the Tor Foundation and former EFF Executive Director

Mitch Kapor, Co-founder of EFF and Co-chair of the Kapor Center for Social Impact

Pam Samuelson, Richard M. Sherman Distinguished Professor of Law and Information at the University of California, Berkeley

Steven Levy, Wired Senior Writer, and author of Hackers, In the Plex, and other books

Amelia Barlow, daughter of John Perry Barlow

See you there!

Then on Sunday, the Internet Archive is putting on a seminar on AGI (Artificial General Intelligences) & Corporations that is as frightening and interesting as it sounds.

This ties in to this year’s Aaron Swartz Day event, where we have an “AGI Ethics” track this year. (The Ethical Algorithms track is sticking around too.)

About the event:

Even if we don’t know yet how to align Artificial General Intelligences with our goals, we do have experience in aligning organizations with our goals. Some argue corporations are in fact Artificial Intelligences – legally at least we treat them as persons already.

The Foresight Institute, along with the Internet Archive, invite you to spend an afternoon examining AI alignment, especially whether our interactions with different types of organizations, e.g. our treatment of corporations as persons, allow insights into how to align AI goals with human goals.

While this meeting focuses on AI safety, it merges AI safety, philosophy, computer security, and law and should be highly relevant for anyone working in or interested in those areas.

Tickets – $10

See you there too! :-)

Announcements, Remembering Aaron, Remembering John Perry Barlow

John Perry Barlow Recalls A 12 year-old Aaron Swartz

aaron and john

Although you often see John Perry Barlow sitting behind Aaron in the famous photograph by Daniel J. Sieradski, above, the two of them never actually met each other.

From John Perry on November 8, 2014: “Correction! Aaron and I met and met heavily… But primarily on that one day. We were casual friends later but I think he never got over the initial awe enough to relax and really tell me what happened that day. But he did tell his father.”

John Perry walked up to the front of the room at the very beginning of the “open mic” segment at the end of Aaron’s San Francisco memorial, and explained that they had actually met before, sort-of, many years earlier, when  John Perry came to talk to his school one day, whe Aaron was 11 or 12 years old.

When John Perry ran into Aaron’s father, Robert Swartz, after he had accepted Aaron’s Internet Hall of Fame award last year, he asked if he thought he’d had made an impression on Aaron that day?

Robert replied that he most certainly had.

The rest, as they say, is history.

John Perry Barlow’s speech during “open mic” portion of the San Francisco Memorial, January 24, 2013:

Aaron Swartz was the embodiment and apotheosis of everything that I’ve stood for for the last 25 years, and it is paradoxical that even though that was true, and even though he was profoundly involved with most of my best friends and greatest heroes, I spent almost all the time that I ever spent with him, one afternoon in, I think, 1996, when he really was a very little kid.

I’d been asked by the headmaster of Northshore Country Day to come and speak to the middle school, and, for some reason, there was this 10 or 11 year old that was in among the middle schoolers. And I spent the afternoon – this was a time when, I don’t think there were that many people who felt the way I did about this stuff. Most of them are in this room now. And I was promoting the idea that we could make a world where anybody anywhere could give his thirst for knowledge and his curiosity everything that it wanted to know. And *anybody* could know as much as any human being knew about any thing, in the future. He didn’t say much. He was extremely memorable, however. He was much younger. He was all eyes, and mind, and…spiritual radiance, in a way. And I scarcely saw him again.

But years later… Last year, at one point, when I was with a bunch of copyright barons in Paris at the EG8, and they were all talking about how enforcement and education was gonna come out right, and it was gonna be just like the War on some Drugs. And I happened to be on a panel with these guys. I said “you know, you think you’ve won this thing, or you will win this thing. But the truth is that you’ve turned a whole generation into an electronic Hezbollah. And you will be dead when they are alive. And I was thinking of Aaron Swartz and it’s really very difficult for me to see that he is dead, and they are alive. But he is not dead, and they will be.

****

Historical notes:

  1. This was originally republished on November 8, 2016, and republished on February 8, 2018.

2. This post used to say “EFF and Freedom of the Press co-founder John Perry Barlow will be appearing with Freedom of the Press co-founder and executive director Trevor Timm, and Brian Knappenberger, Director of “The Internet’s Own Boy,” for a Q & A with the audience at tonight’s Aaron Swartz Day celebration.” at the top :)

Announcements, Remembering Aaron

Ortiz is Retiring – January 11 Approaching…

Be sure to tweet your January 11 events to us, so we can let everyone know about them.

Well, Carmen Ortiz is finally retiring:

From a Daily Beast article, that gets it about right (although it spells Aaron’s name wrong):

During her time in office, Ortiz came under fire for pursuing harsh charges in some high-profile cases, including that of internet activist Aaron Schwartz. Schwartz was accused of downloading free articles from an MIT archive, against terms of use. Ortiz’s office charged Schwartz with 13 felony accounts, which threatened up to 30 years in prison. Schwartz committed suicide before his trial. The incident prompted over 60,000 to accuse Ortiz of “overreach” and petition for her removal.

There is a rally going on at the Boston courthouse in memory of Aaron, from 3-6pm EST on the fourth anniversary of Aaron’s death, January 11, 2017.

Here’s more about Marty Gottesfeld, from ShadowProof’s Kevin Gosztola:

Wife Of Activist Jailed For Digital Sit-In Seeks Help From Trump

Dana and marty

 

From the article:

Gottesfeld was arrested in Miami in February last year and faces a conspiracy charge and charges of “intent to damage a protected computer,” which are offenses under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. If convicted, he faces up to 25 years in prison and could pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in restitution.

Carmen Ortiz, who zealously prosecuted Aaron Swartz until he committed suicide in 2013, is the federal prosecutor leading the effort to prosecute Gottesfeld.

“I’d like [Trump] to use his influence to get the charges dropped against Marty because of the nature of the whistleblowing, because Marty didn’t hurt anybody whereas the doctors at the hospital did hurt people and they’re not facing any charges,” Dana Gottesfeld, Marty’s wife, told Shadowproof in an interview.

She also would like Trump to support Justina’s Law, which she said is legislation that “would protect children that become wards of the state from medical testing that doesn’t benefit them.”

 

 

Aaron Swartz Day 2016, Announcements, Internet Archive, Political Ad Archive

Taking A Break To Watch History Unfold Real Quick… and Archive It!

Hi Folks,

We’ve decided to take just two days off from publishing Aaron Swartz Day content, and pick up Wednesday morning with the videos and transcripts from last this last weekend’s event.

Remember to VOTE! If you are in San Francisco on Tuesday evening at 6pm, come down and hang out with us at the Internet Archive:

Election Night at the Internet Archive

The Internet Archive is informally open to our employees, their families and friends, and our community to watch the election results next Tuesday night. This is a spur-of-the-moment invitation and an experiment. If there are enough people interested, we will use the great room.

The Internet Archive’s blog post mentions a $10 ticket cost (Eventbrite) to cover the cost of pizza and soda. Additionally though, we also still have lots of awesomely fresh made salsa and other goodies from Aaron Swartz Day.

The event will run from 6pm until the election is called — 11pm at the latest. We will limit the number of people and we reserve the right to ask anyone to leave for any reason.

If you are interested in volunteering to help that evening, please contact Salem at salem(@)archive.org.

RE: voting and the Internet Archive

You can also read these articles about the Political Ad Archive and use the actual Political Ad Archive itself, or even just the the data from the Political Ad Archive.

We are just scratching the surface of information that we are going to glean from this year’s amazing archive!

See you there! 6pm! Internet Archive!

Aaron Swartz Day 2016, Aaron Swartz International Hackathon 2016, Announcements

Come to Today’s Aaron Swartz Day and International Hackathon

TICKETS TO EVENING EVENT

Hello there :-)

I wanted to take a moment to fill you in on everything going on this weekend.

In San Francisco, we have a hackathon going on, with an upstairs, where speakers are going on, and a downstairs, where code and society are being “hacked” on.

Saturday morning, I’ll be there at 9:30 am with bagels and cream cheese, blueberry muffins and english muffins, fruit, yogurt and COFFEE for breakfast.

Jeremy Stribling will start at 10:00 upstairs in the Great Room, giving a tutorial about Keybase and usable encryption (yay!)

Note that, there are many folks coming from out of town, and it has turned into quite the nice conference hang out atmosphere, over the years. So, this year, you may just want to come by and hang, whether you feel like hacking or not. (So, perhaps, for some of you, it will be more of a “hangathon.” Hehehe … sorry :)

The evening event starts at 6:30 with a reception with chips & salsa (really good salsa), wine, beer, nectar, and other nibbles (yes some vegan)*, and that’s all going on till 7:30 pm…

And since, as many of you know, it can be really hard at the Internet Archive to make your way upstairs sometimes, this year, I’m giving you lushes an entire half hour to make your way upstairs.

The speakers will start promptly at 8! :-)

More about Sunday Soon! :-)

*Welcome vegans, here’s the vegan food on hand for you: 1) chips and salsa 2) soylent 2) salad 3) nuts 4) trail mix 5) a few sandwiches that will be stashed away and available on request.