Greetings friends! I'm organizing an event at UW next week to remember and celebrate Aaron Swartz. The event will involve a reading, the screening of a documentary film, and a Q&A. The event coincides with the third anniversary of Aaron's death and the release of a new book of Swartz's writing that I contributed to. Aaron was a friend and a roommate of mine in Boston. Please feel free to forward this on to lists or other groups you think might be interested. Details are below: WHAT: Aaron Swartz: The Boy Who Could Change the World – Reflections on Technology and Civil Liberties WHEN: Wednesday, January 13 at 6:30-9:30 p.m. WHERE: Communications Building (CMU) 120, University of Washington We invite you to celebrate the life and activism efforts of Aaron Swartz, hosted by UW Communication professor Benjamin Mako Hill. The event is next week and will consist of a short book reading, a screening of a documentary about Aaron’s life, and a Q&A with Mako who knew Aaron well – details are below. No RSVP required; we hope you can join us. Aaron Swartz was a programming prodigy, entrepreneur, and information activist who contributed to the core Internet protocol RSS and co-founded Reddit, among other groundbreaking work. However, it was his efforts in social justice and political organizing combined with his aggressive approach to promoting increased access to information that entangled him in a two-year legal nightmare that ended with the taking of his own life at the age of 26. January 11, 2016 marks the third anniversary of his death. Join us two days later for a reading from a new posthumous collection of Swartz’s writing published by New Press, a showing of “The Internet's Own Boy” (a documentary about his life), and a Q&A with UW Communication professor Benjamin Mako Hill – a former roommate and friend of Swartz and a contributor to and co-editor of the first section of the new book. I hope to see some of you there! If you are on this list but not in Seattle, I have a blog post with links to events in other cities: https://mako.cc/copyrighteous/celebrate-aaron-swartz-2016 Regards, Mako -- Benjamin Mako Hill http://mako.cc/ Creativity can be a social contribution, but only in so far as society is free to use the results. --GNU Manifesto