Radical geeks are in deep conflict with the existing rules and values of this era

The departure of Allen Schwarz reflects the profound conflict between radical geeks and the existing rules and values of this era. For these young people, may be more tolerant and awe, perhaps a few years later we relish the world, it is by these "eccentric" shape.

Whenever Allen Schwarz turn over, can always vaguely hear the faint current sound under the body. During that time, he and 3 partners rented a house in Somerville, Massachusetts, to develop social news website Reddit. It was small, dark and cluttered, with winding cables and hard drives, and at night he slept in an unlocked wiring cabinet. 5 years later, he slipped a computer in the closet and hid it under a box, then connected it to the MIT computer network and downloaded 4.8 million documents from the journal database. This was the fatal fuse of his subsequent tragedy.

He is always reading when he is not writing a program. He dropped out of high school and dropped out of Stanford University, but more books than most students in school. When someone invited him to a party, he eventually appeared in such an image: unkempt hair, no clean stubble, a nerd's peculiar shy expression. But the black eyes were always gazing, showing that he was observing, remembering and thinking. There were times when he could do nothing, because migraines like a razor thrust into his brain, and his full-length was burnt in flames.

For the Internet, he is a gifted gift: 3-Year-old began to contact the Internet, at the age of 14 to help create a new RSS feed rules, to facilitate the spread of blogs, articles and videos on the Internet; and as a teenager, he became a team member of the "Knowledge sharing" project, Hope to simplify the threshold of information sharing through free and easy-to-use copyright licenses; In 2006, Reddit, a co-founder of Hit's social news website, became a young millionaire after the company was sold to Nast, who was less than 20 years old.

His short life was devoted to promoting the openness and sharing of the internet, breaking the wall of information flow, July 19, 2011, when he was arrested on suspicion of downloading a large number of academic papers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the Journal of Science and Academic paper archiving (JSTOR), September 2012, US federal prosecutors have filed up to 13 felony felony charges against Mr. Schwartz and, if convicted, Mr. Schwartz faces a maximum of 35 years of judicial imprisonment and a 1 million dollar fine. On January 11, 2013, Schwartz, who suffers from severe depression, chose to end his life with a belt in Brooklyn, New York.

Behind him, someone called him "digital hero", and some people call him "the Internet of the victims of openness," but few people think, as a unique value of the geek, he was in life how lonely and not understood.

Struggle”

He was born a geek-he was deeply influenced by his family. Allen Schwarz was born in Chicago in 1986, and his father was the boss of a software company. When he was 3 years old, Schwartz began to touch computers, less than 10 years old when he wrote a program to backwards the puzzle.

He had the opportunity to become a millionaire, but he never had the idea. The work he did was underpaid, even zero. There are, of course, exceptions. Mr. Schwartz profited from the acquisition of the social news website, Reddit, which he co-founded in 2006, by Nast Group. But his office life was out of his league, and after a few months he resigned and then cleanly rejected Google's invitation to join. But despite his disdain for wealth, the money at least allows him to focus on his own "struggle".

He has participated in a number of "struggles", of which he is most proud of the SOPA Act (the Ban on Internet Piracy Act) "closed". Under the bill, with the court's permission, the U.S. Attorney general could ask other companies to stop collaborating with IPR-infringing websites, including linking websites and IP addresses. The main supporters of the bill are Hollywood and some big record companies.

In an interview with reporters, he explained why he strongly opposed the legislation: "It provides for censorship of the Internet, a system that never existed in the United States." Under Sopa, there is no adversarial court sentence, only unilateral statements before the judge, and if a website is to be closed, they do not even need to show evidence of the crime. He quickly formed an organization-to enter the alliance. It denounced censorship, launched hundreds of thousands of of people to sign petitions, and became the mainstay of the online boycott, forcing the vote to delay and ultimately prevent the passage of the SOPA bill.

He looks shy, but he is more leadership than he imagines. "I've been out of the fight, I've got other things to do, but I'm going to try to be a catalyst at the critical moment, and good team building has stopped sopa." "His leadership also comes from the family, and his family emphasizes the role of advocacy." Grandfather William Schwarz founded the Albert Einstein Foundation and worked with Pugwash to reduce regional armed conflicts.

But he is not an anarchist. The technology industry has always had a technology-liberal view, "if we don't have a government and let anyone write software, then everything will be fine", he says he has never been persuaded by a similar argument.

The early exposure to the internet has formed his view of consumption and knowledge of the value of information. When he was a child, he discussed the nature of copyright with his father, and he thought that digital information without basic costs should be shared for free. All his activities revolve around this information value set up from an early age.

Under its guidance, he has done more than the work mentioned above. In 2006, he got all the bibliographic data from the Library of Congress and put it on the online "Public Library" for free. In his view, the opening of such information is the work of the U.S. government, the library should not charge a high fee.

In 2009, he downloaded 18 million pages of information from federal court systems using temporary free access to public libraries. The access system, known as "access to electronic court records by the public", was paid for use, which he considered to be a misnomer. The FBI investigated the case but did not file a lawsuit.

But his luck wasn't always so good. He was arrested in 2011 for downloading 4.8 million documents free of charge from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and JSTOR. The act is still judged by his values, and he believes that knowledge is the result of public funding, and that it is morally wrong to sell these documents at a price of 19 dollars.

JSTOR has no intention of pursuing responsibility, but the federal prosecutor insists that he will face up to 35 years in prison and a fine of 1 million dollars if the charges are substantiated. January 11, 2013, his girlfriend found him hanged in Brooklyn, New York.

He is a depressive sufferer; he has read many philosophical books, encouraging readers to "cheer up and not lose heart"; He has written many articles about time management. But he was discouraged in the face of a possible loss of 35 years.

Just 2 days before his death, JSTOR just expanded the access rights of free users to 4.5 million articles.

Tolerance

What were we talking about when we talked about Alan? Is the world's tolerance of geeks. Some of them are more likely to be suspicious, questioning, or expelled from the world, than from the original framework of understanding, or even conflict with some vested interests.

How many people knew Nikola, the great inventor who had been deliberately forgotten by the United States? He designed the AC system, and in the current war with Edison to win, so that the latter and other people who profited in direct current power loss of great benefits, Edison declared that he is the scientific community "heresy." He built Vodenkriveta to experiment with wireless power, but originally J. P Morgan's huge subsidy only allowed him to develop radio communications, and after the Italian Marconi first patented the radio, Vodenkriveta became a rotten-tail building. He disagreed with Einstein's theory and was not in tune with emerging quantum physics, and no one in "orthodox" science liked him.

But now, the world is using alternating current; In 2008, Intel demonstrated in the developer forum how the wireless light bulb could be lit, although it was far from Tesla's experiment, but it was still a matter of intense concern-a society that was late for the geek.

Without this tolerance, he had no later jobs and Apple--in 1971, Jobs and Wozniak made 15000 of dollars by selling "blue boxes" (their homemade, toll-free phone equipment), but the US telephone and Telegraph company gave up on their charges, no jail, no fines, 1976, Two people set up Apple.

Without this tolerance, and no Zuckerberg and his Facebook. Initially, he created a website, put a few pictures of girls, the viewers can choose which one of the most "spicy", and ranked according to the vote, and the first photo he used was obtained through the invasion of Harvard University database.

Sometimes, in the conflict between geek behavior and traditional social cognition, the world has changed in the process of trying to tolerate them, and sometimes the world is too "cold" when it comes to treating Allen Schwarz.

When we talk about tolerance, we are also talking about the awe of the young.

New technologies and new ideas that drive history are often not thought out by people who respect authority, and they come from young people like Jobs, Larry Page and Zuckerberg. These young people may lack traditional business acumen and sophisticated business logic, but they can always use innovation to bring new possibilities to a stable and stagnant society. Perhaps a few years later, the world we relish is shaped by the freaks.

In 1891, Edison's lighting company had a "do not work" engineer, he was addicted to the study of internal combustion engine, a few years later the young man made his first car, and in early 20th century developed the world's first T-car assembly line, not only to let the car into thousands of households, Also laid a modern industrial system in the pipeline production model of the basis, he called Henry Ford.

In 1974, a 19-year-old college student enrolled in school for only one semester, staying in a friend's garage, wandering around the community college to attend calligraphy, design courses, and even spend all of their savings to go to India for "spirituality", and of course he has a hobby to stay in the garage with friends to tinker with electrical components, as you know , he is jobs, from computers, tablets to mobile phones, our society today's understanding of consumer electronics, and even our aesthetic is deeply affected by this person.

Of course, for the backbone of a society, the tolerance of young people is more tolerant of their own.

When Eric Schmidt, the chairman of Google's current board of directors, was still a young man, he ran the Solaris computer operating system at Sun. Sun and Microsoft had a patent war, and one day they received a "gift" from Microsoft at their product launch, wrapped in a small coffin, The Solaris logo is printed on it.

In October 2012, when Mr. Schmidt was interviewed by the media as Google's executive chairman, he spoke about 4 of the world's most influential technology companies, Facebook, Amazon, Apple and Google. Someone asked: "You forget Microsoft?" Schmidt replied, "This is a thoughtful thought." "Just as Silicon Valley's pioneer sun has fallen in the face of Microsoft's aggressive attack, young Google is now inexorably eroding Microsoft's once-proud turf: In the browser world, chrome is eating down on IE's share; Google's many product lines are shaking the position of the Microsoft Desktop King, and in the mobile Internet, Microsoft has become a follower behind Google. Interestingly, in recent years it was the young man from Sun, who was humiliated by Microsoft, by Eric Schmidt, who pushed Google to hit Microsoft in a number of areas.

"Don't annoy a young man, he will really remember you forever." "said Schmidt.