![]() ![]() And somebody said to me: “So this … umm … Aaron Swartz, he’s going to be coming to the meeting, is he?” And I said: “Yes, I think so.” And they said: “You know, he’s 14.” “What? he’s 14 years old? Oh … He’s a minor! What? We’ve never had a minor, we don’t know what we should do – do we have to get a parent to sign a permission form? We don’t know how to do this!” Here’s this guy who is looked up to and respected and a major contributor - who is wise beyond his years. And the RDF Working Group decided to meet. But we actually then had a time when we decided a number of working groups would meet together. Normally, everything happens online – we share code, ideas, hopes and dreams. At one point this group, which normally met only online, was going to have a rare face-to-face meeting. He joined a working group which was doing work on the Semantic Web, the RDF Working Group. At one point I was even worried that this “aaronsw” guy, whoever he was, was going to organize, that his organization of his group there was going to threaten the fact that the World Wide Web Consortium, my Consortium, was where all these people would come and do their standards because he seemed to be such a good organizer. He also started organizing people, getting people to agree about how stuff should be done. He didn’t just talk, he coded! And those who code, who make stuff, get a lot of respect. I’m not very good at programming but I think what you’re doing is cool and I’d like to help.” And he started doing all kinds of things. He sent a message to the list saying: “Hi, I’m Aaron. And this guy “aaronsw” turned up and he introduced himself. The Semantic Web was what was cool and interesting to me at the time and I hang out there and a bunch of other people did too. ![]() (They’re sort of a window – a chat room – where you can see who else is there and anybody can type anything into the group conversation.) And so, many years ago, there was a Semantic Web Interest Group chat room. Generally we hung out in Internet Relay Chat rooms. I mean “hacker” in the most positive way the technical community does, someone who can do stuff, build stuff, with computers. I first came across him online in the hacker community. A spark, that in Aaron’s case is out - but what an incredible spark he was! Blazing across the dark sky of ordinary people, broken systems, a shining force for good, a maker of great things. I suppose when people talk of a meteoric career you can think of a meteor as something amazing and bright. ![]()
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