The Boy Who Could Change the World (42 page)

EPILOGUE

Legacy

http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/legacy

June 1, 2006

Age 19

Ambitious people want to leave legacies, but what sort of legacies do they want to leave? The traditional criterion is that your importance is measured by the effect of what you do. Thus the most important lawyers are the Supreme Court justices, since their decisions affect the entire nation. And the greatest mathematicians are those that make important discoveries, since their discoveries end up being used by many who follow.

This seems quite reasonable. One's legacy depends on one's impact, and what better way to measure impact than by the effect of what you've done? But this is measuring against the wrong baseline. The real question is not what effect your work had, but what things would be like had you never done it.

The two are not at all the same. It is rather commonly accepted that there are “ideas whose time has come,” and history tends to bear this out. When Newton invented the calculus, so did Leibniz. When Darwin discovered evolution through natural selection, so did Alfred Russel Wallace. When Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone, so did Elisha Gray (before him, arguably).

In these cases the facts are plain: had Newton, Darwin, and Bell never done their work, the result would have been largely the same—we'd still have calculus, evolution, and the telephone. And yet such people are hailed as major heroes, their legacies immortalized.

Perhaps, if one only cares about such things, this is enough. (Although this seems a rather dangerous game, since the future could wake up at any moment and realize its adulation is misplaced.) But if
one genuinely cares about their impact, instead of simply how their impact is perceived, more careful thought is in order.

I once spent time with a well-known academic, who had published several works widely recognized as classics even outside his field, and he offered some career advice in the sciences. (Actually, come to think of it, there are two people of whom this is true, suggesting the phenomenon has broader significance.) Such-and-such a field is very hot right now, he said, you could really make a name for yourself by getting into it. The idea being that major discoveries were sure to follow soon and that if I picked that field I could be the one to make them.

By my test, such a thing would leave a poor legacy. (For what it's worth, I don't think either person's works fall into this category; that is to say, their reputation is still deserved even by these standards.) Even worse, you'd know it. Presumably Darwin and Newton didn't begin their investigations because they thought the field was “hot.” They thought through doing it they would have a significant impact, even though that turned out to be wrong. But someone who joined a field simply because they thought a major discovery would come from it soon could never enjoy such a delusion. Instead, they would know that their work would make little difference, and would have to labor under such impressions.

The same is true of other professions we misconceive of as being important. Take being a Supreme Court justice, for example. Traditionally, this is thought of as a majestic job in which one gets to make decisions of great import. In fact, it seems to me that one has little impact at all. Most of your impact was made by the politics of the president who appointed you. Had you not been around for the job, he would have found someone else who would take similar positions. The only way one could have a real impact as Supreme Court justice would be to change your politics once appointed to the bench, and the only way you could prepare for such a thing would be to spend the majority of your career doing things you thought were wrong in the hopes that one day you might get picked for the Supreme Court. That seems a rather hard lot to swallow.

So what jobs do leave a real legacy? It's hard to think of most of them, since by their very nature they require doing things that other
people
aren't
trying to do, and thus include the things that people haven't thought of. But one good source of them is trying to do things that change the system instead of following it. For example, the university system encourages people to become professors who do research in certain areas (and thus many people do this); it discourages people from trying to change the nature of the university itself.

Naturally, doing things like changing the university are much harder than simply becoming yet another professor. But for those who genuinely care about their legacies, it doesn't seem like there's much choice.

CONTRIBUTOR BIOS

Aaron Swartz
(1986–2013) was an American computer programmer, a writer, a political organizer, and an Internet hacktivist. He was involved in the development of RSS, Creative Commons, web.py, and Reddit. He helped launch the Progressive Change Campaign Committee in 2009 and founded the online group Demand Progress. He is survived by his parents and two brothers, who live in Chicago.

Lawrence Lessig
is the director of the Edmon J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University and a professor of law at the Harvard Law School. He was a founding board member of Creative Commons. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Benjamin Mako Hill
is an assistant professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Washington and a faculty affiliate at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard. He is a participant and leader in free software and free culture communities.

Seth Schoen
is senior staff technologist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation in San Francisco, where he worries about technology users' freedom and autonomy. He and Aaron were friends for over a decade; they first met at the U.S. Supreme Court in 2002.

David Auerbach
is a writer and software engineer who lives in New York. He writes the “Bitwise” column for
Slate
.

David Segal
is the executive director and co-founder of the activism organization Demand Progress. He previously served as a member of the Providence City Council and as a Rhode Island state representative. He ran for Congress in 2010, backed by much of the “netroots,” organized labor, and the Rhode Island progressive movement. During his tenure at Demand Progress he has helped lead various grassroots efforts to protect Internet freedom, including the successful defeat of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). He co-edited and wrote much of a book about that effort, called
Hacking Politics
. His writing on public policy matters has appeared in a variety of publications. He holds a degree in mathematics from Columbia University.

Henry Farrell
is associate professor of political science and international affairs at George Washington University. He works on a variety of topics, including trust, the politics of the Internet, and international and comparative political economy. He has written articles and book chapters as well as a book,
The Political Economy of Trust: Interests, Institutions and Inter-Firm Cooperation
, published by Cambridge University Press.

Cory Doctorow
is a Canadian-British
blogger
,
journalist
, and science fiction author who serves as co-editor of the blog
Boing Boing
. He is an activist in favor of liberalizing
copyright
laws and a proponent of the
Creative Commons
organization, using some of their licenses for his books. Some common themes of his work include
digital rights management
,
file sharing
, and
post-scarcity
economics. His novels include
Down and Out in the Magic, Kingdom
, and
Little Brother
.

James Grimmelmann
is a professor of law at the University of Maryland. He studies how laws regulating software affect freedom, wealth, and power.

Astra Taylor
is a writer and documentary filmmaker. Her films include
Zizek!
, a feature documentary about the world's most outrageous philosopher, which was broadcast on the Sundance Channel,
and
Examined Life
, a series of excursions with contemporary thinkers. Her writing has appeared in
The Nation, Salon, Monthly Review, The Baffler
, and other publications. Her most recent book is
The People's Platform
. She lives in New York City.

This volume was edited by
Jed Bickman,
currently an associate editor at The New Press.

PUBLISHING IN THE PUBLIC INTEREST

Thank you for reading this book published by The New Press. The New Press is a nonprofit, public interest publisher. New Press books and authors play a crucial role in sparking conversations about the key political and social issues of our day.

We hope you enjoyed this book and that you will stay in touch with The New Press. Here are a few ways to stay up to date with our books, events, and the issues we cover:

       
•
  
Sign up at
www.thenewpress.com/subscribe
to receive updates on New Press authors and issues and to be notified about local events

       
•
  
Like us on Facebook:
www.facebook.com/newpressbooks

       
•
  
Follow us on Twitter:
www.twitter.com/thenewpress

Please consider buying New Press books for yourself; for friends and family; or to donate to schools, libraries, community centers, prison libraries, and other organizations involved with the issues our authors write about.

The New Press is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. You can also support our work with a tax-deductible gift by visiting
www.thenewpress.com/donate
.

THE STUDS AND IDA TERKEL AWARD

On the occasion of his ninetieth birthday, Studs Terkel and his son, Dan, announced the creation of the Studs and Ida Terkel Author Fund. The Fund is devoted to supporting the work of promising authors in a range of fields who share Studs's fascination with the many dimensions of everyday life in America and who, like Studs, are committed to exploring aspects of America that are not adequately represented by the mainstream media. The Terkel Fund furnishes authors with the vital support they need to conduct their research and writing, providing a new generation of writers the freedom to experiment and innovate in the spirit of Studs's own work.

Studs and Ida Terkel Award Winners

Aaron Swartz,
The Boy Who Could Change the World: The Writings of Aaron Swartz
(awarded posthumously)

Beth Zasloff and Joshua Steckel,
Hold Fast to Dreams: A College Guidance Counselor, His Students, and the Vision of a Life Beyond Poverty

Barbara J. Miner,
Lessons from the Heartland: A Turbulent Half-Century of Public Education in an Iconic American City

Lynn Powell,
Framing Innocence: A Mother's Photographs, a Prosecutor's Zeal, and a Small Town's Response

Lauri Lebo,
The Devil in Dover: An Insider's Story of Dogma v. Darwin in Small-Town America