The Idealist
Aaron Swartz and the Rise of Free Culture on the Internet
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Narrated by:
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Corey Brill
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By:
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Justin Peters
About this listen
A smart, lively history of the Internet free culture movement and its larger effects on society - and the life and shocking suicide of Aaron Swartz, a founding developer of Reddit and Creative Commons - from Slate correspondent Justin Peters.
Aaron Swartz was a zealous young advocate for the free exchange of information and creative content online. He committed suicide in 2013 after being indicted by the government for illegally downloading millions of academic articles from a nonprofit online database. From the age of 15, when Swartz, a computer prodigy, worked with Lawrence Lessig to launch Creative Commons, to his years as a fighter for copyright reform and open information to his work leading the protests against the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) to his posthumous status as a cultural icon, Swartz's life was inextricably connected to the free culture movement. Now Justin Peters examines Swartz's life in the context of 200 years of struggle over the control of information.
In vivid, accessible prose, The Idealist situates Swartz in the context of other "data moralists" past and present, from lexicographer Noah Webster to eBook pioneer Michael Hart to NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. In the process the book explores the history of copyright statutes and the public domain; examines archivists' ongoing quest to build the "library of the future"; and charts the rise of open access, copyleft, and other ideologies that have come to challenge protectionist IP policies. Peters also breaks down the government's case against Swartz and explains how we reached the point where federally funded academic research came to be considered private property, and downloading that material in bulk came to be considered a federal crime.
The Idealist is an important investigation of the fate of the digital commons in an increasingly corporatized Internet and an essential look at the impact of the free culture movement on our daily lives and on generations to come.
©2016 Justin Peters (P)2016 Simon & SchusterListeners also enjoyed...
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Story
In the very near future, smart “technologies and big data” will allow us to make large-scale and sophisticated interventions in politics, culture, and everyday life. Technology will allow us to solve problems in highly original ways and create new incentives to get more people to do the right thing. But how will such “solutionism” affect our society, once deeply political, moral, and irresolvable dilemmas are recast as uncontroversial and easily manageable matters of technological efficiency?
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The about face shift in view I've been looking for
- By McKane on 03-18-15
By: Evgeny Morozov
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The Starfish and the Spider
- The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations
- By: Ori Brafman, Rod Beckstrom
- Narrated by: Sean Pratt
- Length: 5 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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If you cut off a spider's leg, it's crippled; if you cut off its head, it dies. But if you cut off a starfish's leg it grows a new one, and the old leg can grow into an entirely new starfish. The Starfish and the Spider argues that organizations fall into two categories: "spiders", which have a rigid hierarchy, and "starfish", which rely on the power of peer relationships.
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Centralized and decentralized models
- By Chan Meng on 12-07-07
By: Ori Brafman, and others
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Too Big To Know
- Rethinking Knowledge Now That the Facts Aren't the Facts, Experts Are Everywhere, and the Smartest Person in the Room Is the Room
- By: David Weinberger
- Narrated by: Peter Johnson
- Length: 8 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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We used to know how to know. We got our answers from books or experts. We'd nail down the facts and move on. But in the Internet age, knowledge has moved onto networks. There's more knowledge than ever, of course, but it's different. Topics have no boundaries, and nobody agrees on anything.Yet this is the greatest time in history to be a knowledge seeker - if you know how.
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Good to know ...
- By John B. Fisher on 01-24-12
By: David Weinberger
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No Place to Hide
- Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S. Surveillance State
- By: Glenn Greenwald
- Narrated by: L. J. Ganser
- Length: 9 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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In May 2013, Glenn Greenwald set out for Hong Kong to meet an anonymous source who claimed to have astonishing evidence of pervasive government spying and insisted on communicating only through heavily encrypted channels. That source turned out to be the 29-year-old NSA contractor Edward Snowden, and his revelations about the agency’s widespread, systemic overreach proved to be some of the most explosive and consequential news in recent history, triggering a fierce debate over national security....
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Best Read in Print Format
- By Alfredo Ramirez on 11-22-14
By: Glenn Greenwald
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Smarter Than You Think
- How Technology Is Changing Our Minds for the Better
- By: Clive Thompson
- Narrated by: Jeff Cummings
- Length: 10 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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In Smarter Than You Think, Thompson documents how every technological innovation - from the printing press to the telegraph - has provoked the very same anxieties that plague us today. We panic that life will never be the same, that our attentions are eroding, that culture is being trivialized. But as in the past, we adapt, learning to use the new and retaining what’s good of the old.
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Title should be Getting Smarter Through Technology
- By A. Yoshida on 03-10-17
By: Clive Thompson
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What Would Google Do?
- By: Jeff Jarvis
- Narrated by: Jeff Jarvis
- Length: 9 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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In a book that's one part prophecy, one part thought experiment, one part manifesto, and one part survival manual, internet impresario and blogging pioneer Jeff Jarvis reverse-engineers Google, the fastest-growing company in history, to discover 40 clear and straightforward rules to manage and live by.
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Shallow and one-sided
- By JimmiJ on 02-04-09
By: Jeff Jarvis
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Program or Be Programmed
- Ten Commands for a Digital Age
- By: Douglas Rushkoff
- Narrated by: Douglas Rushkoff
- Length: 3 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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In 10 chapters, composed of 10 "commands", Rushkoff provides cyber enthusiasts and technophobes alike with the guidelines to navigate the digital new universe. In this spirited, accessible poetics of new media, Rushkoff picks up where Marshall McLuhan left off, helping listeners to recognize programming as the new literacy of the digital age - and as a template through which to see beyond social conventions and power structures that have vexed us for centuries.
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Good book, but with some crazy ranting
- By Bjarne on 02-05-15
By: Douglas Rushkoff
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Taking on the Trust
- The Epic Battle of Ida Tarbell and John D. Rockefeller
- By: Steve Weinberg
- Narrated by: Pam Ward
- Length: 11 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Long before the rise of mega-corporations like Wal-Mart and Microsoft, Standard Oil controlled the oil industry with a monopolistic force unprecedented in American business history. Undaunted by the ruthless power of its owner, John D. Rockefeller, a fearless and ambitious reporter named Ida Minerva Tarbell confronted the company known simply as "The Trust".
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Annoying Narrator
- By Nate on 04-03-15
By: Steve Weinberg
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The Formula
- How Algorithms Solve all our Problems…and Create More
- By: Luke Dormehl
- Narrated by: Daniel Weyman
- Length: 7 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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A fascinating guided tour of the complex, fast-moving, and influential world of algorithms - what they are, why they’re such powerful predictors of human behavior, and where they’re headed next. Algorithms exert an extraordinary level of influence on our everyday lives - from dating websites and financial trading floors, through to online retailing and internet searches - Google's search algorithm is now a more closely guarded commercial secret than the recipe for Coca-Cola.
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Not about algorithms. Not an original book.
- By Landon Rordam on 12-02-14
By: Luke Dormehl
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Louis D. Brandeis
- A Life
- By: Melvin I Urofsky
- Narrated by: Sean Pratt
- Length: 35 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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The first full-scale biography in 25 years of one of the most important and distinguished justices to sit on the Supreme Court - an audiobook that reveals Louis D. Brandeis the reformer, lawyer, and jurist, and Brandeis the man, in all of his complexity, passion, and wit. As a lawyer in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, he pioneered how modern law is practiced.
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a Listen to Louis D. Brandeis
- By J on 07-11-10
By: Melvin I Urofsky
What listeners say about The Idealist
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- J. Brennecke
- 01-10-21
this important
I will be using this book as my pilot launch, demonstration of XYZ Workflows.
There is so much contained in this book.
I do disagree with the parties Schwartz associated with, Progressives, I do believe his vision and feel the Libertarian ideology would have suited him better.
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- Arthur Baker
- 05-18-22
An intelligent and entertaining read
The author’s creative narrative style blends the history of intellectual property with the life of Aaron Schwartz to tell an informative, heartfelt, and entertaining story.
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- Shirley
- 11-14-16
Fascinating, tragic, gripping and prophetic
I am not qualified to comment on the complexities of sociology, nor am I learned enough to understand the entanglements of copyright law, but I can say that this is a story of tragedy, greed, love, passion, and politics.
Interesting segments of information management and Internet history color the tale of a brilliant mind subsumed by a society unable and incapable of accepting his positions however obvious they were.
The book is a must read for sociologists, librarians, industrialists, scientists and talented youth aspiring to make the ultimate difference ... and possibly save humanity from its clear course of repeating history yet again.
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- LifeLearner
- 10-09-23
Aaron Schwartz’s life is inspirational and tragic
Aaron Schwartz was a wonder kid who had high ideals and spent his life pursuing them. He was committed to a democratization of information and had the courage to fight the corporate establishment. His story is an inspiration.
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- Lulu
- 02-20-16
Nothing New But a Good Reminder
I read the Slate article by Peters that this book was based on a few months after Swartz death. I am not certain why this sad story captured my attention. I was vaguely aware of Schwartz before his death, I think because of my long time interest in Creative Commons and the SOPA/PIPA fights. But when I read of what seemed to be a senseless and unexpected suicide, I felt compelled to understand why someone so brilliant and talented believed that ending his life was his best option.
The book fleshes out the article. It does so by including a broad history of intellectual property rights in the US, background on the Library of Congress and brief overview's of the key characters in the last 200 years that have shaped our view of intellectual property, both the proponents and opponents.
The book did not delve much deeper into Aaron Swartz's short life or tragic death. It provided a little more background about his early years. But the many unanswered questions - like why did he download the JStore articles, what did he hope to accomplish and why did the US Attorney feel compelled to so drastically overreach in their charges- are not answered in this book. And the most tragic question - why did he feel compelled to end his life is also left unanswered.
However, after reading the book I believe that those questions were not answered, because there are no answers, at least as respects Swartz's actions. We will never understand it. I assume the US Attorney could provide an explanation for her excessive overkill actions in this case, but don't expect she ever will. So while this book revealed nothing new, I think it would have been unrealistic to expect it to. But I still recommend the book and believe it is worth reading, simply because we should never forget how fragile we are and how extra-fragile the truly gifted among us seem to be.
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3 people found this helpful