he was an American computer programmer
entrepreneur organizer and Internet
activist he was involved in the
development of the web feed format
system RSS and the social news sharing
site reddit he founded the group demand
progress which campaigned against a Stop
Online Privacy Act
he’s Aaron Swartz and here are his top
ten rules for success you know feel very
strongly that it’s not enough to just
live in the world as it is to just kind
of take what you’re given and you know
follow the things that adults told you
to do and you know your parents told you
to do and the society tells you to do I
think you should always be questioning
you know I take this very scientific
attitude that everything you’ve learned
is just provisional that you know it’s
always open to recantation or refutation
or questioning and I think the same
applies to society and I you know felt
growing up you know I slowly had this
process of realizing that all the things
around me that people had told me were
just the natural way things were the way
things always would be weren’t natural
at all they were things that could be
changed and they were things that more
importantly were wrong and should change
and once I realized that there was
really kind of no going back I couldn’t
fool myself into saying oh I’m just
going to go work for a business and
ignore all that once I realized that
there were real serious problems
fundamental problems that I could do
something to address I didn’t see a way
to to forget that I didn’t see a way not
to do not I repeat do not underestimate
how much your users will help you to
define your product if you launch
without having significant user feedback
time you’ve essentially thrown away a
massive and free focus creep study and I
think that’s very important we all kind
of assume when we’re going into startups
that we have this great brilliant idea
that if although we make it just the way
it is in our heads everyone will love us
and give us money and we’ll be
successful in famous and in reality
that’s just not how it works you hear
stories all the time of people like
flicker
their idea was completely wrong going
into it changes 360 degrees spun around
tried something completely different and
the more you postpone that the more you
postpone interacting with real people
and confronting your idea with the test
of reality the more time you’re just
wasting working on an idea that won’t
actually be successful instead the
important thing is to get it out there
fast confront it with
real people real users and figure out
what makes those people happy I think my
main reaction to it was kind of being
excited about it right part of what made
it magical was finding other people to
connect with and the more and more
people who are there the more people we
had to connect with the more interesting
pages they were to visit the more stuff
that was online I mean you know you
would search for stuff and the vast
majority of the time nothing would come
back because there were only a handful
of people writing stuff for the internet
and so is everybody started putting
things up on the Internet is every
company had a webpage you know you could
suddenly instead of I remember it used
to be so annoying you would open up the
phone book and find a store and dial the
store’s number and ask them you know how
later you open and now you could just
type in their domain name right and
there would be their hours location and
their menu it would all be there you
wouldn’t have to you know at your
fingertips you wouldn’t have to talk to
anybody it would just be instantly
available and I remember you know like
just I couldn’t wait until the whole
world was on the Internet and I never
had to call anybody again
like I said I got interested in in
educational stuff I don’t think I really
got involved in a political campaign I
spent a lot of time you know after that
wondering what it is that I could really
affect you know I did a lot of writing
and a lot of reading but a lot of this
stuff I read about social change you
know seemed to come from this model you
know in in the revolutions in the 60s
people thought oh if we just get enough
people together you know who are angry
then all of a sudden magically this
revolution will happen and will take
over the country and you know it just
didn’t make sense to me I think it you
know now I’m having more background more
context I think it came out of this
experience of watching the Soviet Union
where because the Soviet Union was so
underdeveloped and you know there were
very many political structures in place
it was true that a small group of people
getting a bunch of people angry could
kind of take over the whole country and
I just don’t think that can happen in
developed countries like the US or
Ireland so I began wondering what is it
that you can do in developed countries
you know everything seems so ineffective
and so powerless and it wasn’t until
just recently that I started thinking
okay Dino net provides this opportunity
now to raise money to get candidates
elected you know it used to be there was
just no way for a small group of people
to go up against the power of big money
but one of the things we’ve seen that P
triple see is that you know there’s just
a cup
of us who work there and in the past
year you know using nothing basically
computers and you know our own
apartments we’ve gotten 300,000 people
to join our list and raised 1.25 million
dollars I mean that’s just you know
three people were able to make a huge
difference like that and that I think
means the internet really provides this
chance where we can start taking on big
corporations
what made Reddit grow was people
spreading it by word-of-mouth saying you
know this is a site I really like I
found some cool links on it you should
check it out and what happened would the
way the way to get people to do that was
fit for it to be a site that they came
back to you day after day it became part
of their routine that they felt
comfortable with
and whenever we added features that
meant changing something and whenever
you change something you know your users
tend to get mad at you they liked it the
way you know they were used to the way
it worked before and so they think they
liked it the way it worked before and
they were quibble about any little
changes they you make because it’s clear
that things can be changed it makes them
feel uncomfortable that this site
they’ve gotten used to is changing so I
think by having a solid stable site each
day that made them feel more comfortable
with it and more comfortable about
sharing it and it was that sharing that
got us all our traffic because I think
about the creative processes everything
is built on something else you know
Shakespeare stories were built on
traditional legends and folk tales right
modern stuff is built on Shakespeare
everything builds on something else
there’s no completely new creative thing
if only because if you wrote something
completely new nobody would understand
it I mean we’ll have to use words that
were developed by someone else we use
ideas that were developed by someone
else everything is this process of
pulling things together and recombining
them and so what’s worrying about these
sort of copyright police is that they
want to prevent recombination they want
to have the law come in and say
recombination isn’t legal right that
only you know you have to get a license
for every single thing you use well if
you do that you stifle creativity it’s
almost impossible to get a license for
every single thing you use I mean
imagine if every word you use you had to
call up the person who came up with that
word or if they’re dead they’re
descendants and say can I have
permission to use this word I mean you
never get through a sentence and so
similarly we see creativity stifled you
know songs pull samples from all sorts
of different songs imagine if you had to
call up each person that you borrowed a
note from or a tune from or a sample
from and get permission
all sorts of music would become
impossible we become illegal and I think
that’s what we’re seeing in the wider
culture is that this notion that become
a permission asking society that every
time you do something you have to ask
permission I mean that’s you know the
basically against the freedom culture we
have here that’s the opposite of a free
country the idea that America is you
know unless it’s specifically outlawed
you get to do it the idea of copyright
laws these people want to propose it is
unless you specifically get permission
you just can’t say it
the thing that you know really got me
thinking along these lines was right
before I went to college I read two
books I read a book moral mazes by
Robert jockle which is a study of how
corporations work and it’s it’s actually
a fascinating book the sociologist he
kind of picks the corporation at random
and just goes and studies the middle
managers you know not the people who do
any of the grunt work and not the big
decision makers just the people whose
job is to make sure the things
day-to-day get done and he shows how
even though they’re all perfectly
reasonable people perfectly nice people
you know you’d be happy to meet any of
them all the things that they were
accomplishing we’re just incredibly evil
right so you have you know these people
just this average corporation right
they’re making decisions to blow out the
workers and their factories eardrums to
poison the lakes and the lagoons nearby
to make these products that were filled
with toxic chemicals that poison their
customers not because any of them were
bad people that wanted to kill their
workers in their neighborhood and their
customers but just because that was the
logic of the situation they were in
another book I read was a book
understanding power by Noam Chomsky
which kind of took the same sort of
analysis and applied it to a wider
society which said you know we’re in a
situation where it you know maybe filled
with perfectly good people but they’re
in these structures that cause them to
continually do evil to invade countries
to bomb people you know to take money
from poor people and give it to rich
people to do all these things that are
wrong and you know those books really
opened my eyes about just how bad the
society we were living it is there’s a
battle going on right now a battle to
define everything that happens on the
Internet in terms of traditional things
that the law understands is sharing a
video on BitTorrent like shoplifting
from a movie store or is it like loaning
a videotape to a friend is reloading a
web page over and over again like a
peaceful virtual
or a violent smashing of shop-windows is
the freedom to connect like freedom of
speech or like the freedom to murder
this bill would be a huge potentially
permanent loss if we lost the ability to
communicate with each other over the
Internet it would be a change to the
Bill of Rights the freedoms guaranteed
in our Constitution the freedoms our
country had been built on would be
suddenly deleted new technology instead
of bringing us greater freedom would
have snuffed out fundamental rights we’d
always taken for granted and I realized
that day talking to Peter that I
couldn’t let that happen
Aaron often wrote candidly if his
personal blog I think deeply about
things and I want others to do likewise
I work for ideas and learn from people I
don’t like excluding people I’m a
perfectionist but I won’t let that get
in the way of publication except for
education and entertainment I’m not
going to waste my time on things that
won’t have an impact I try to be friends
with everyone but a hit when you don’t
take me seriously I don’t hold grudges
it’s not productive but I learned from
my experience I want to make the world a
better place I think the most important
thing is to realize that you can
accomplish something you know I know
sometimes it feels you just feel
powerless that you’re one small person
in this world of big corporations and
big evil people and big media companies
and so on there’s just nothing you can
do but the fact is a lot of the reason
it seems like that is because people
feel powerless people are afraid to do
anything you know for a long time I felt
I watched the news and all I saw was
this this corporate propaganda and this
kind of anti octave ISM attacks and I
thought you know the news media was just
inevitably biased against us that there
was just no hope that the only solution
was to create alternative news streams
now at the p-trap I found it’s not that
the news media is inevitably biased
against us it’s that you know reporters
like all of us which is kind of lazy you
know they report the stories that people
give them and there are huge companies
that are willing to write up stories for
them in hand
to them on a silver platter so all they
have to do is type them up you know of
course they’re going to do that and it
turned out when we did the same thing
when we started writing press releases
and we started going to reporters and
pitching them stories they were just as
happy to write about us as they were
about coca-cola and so you know because
I had believed so long the change was
impossible it precluded me from taking
any actions that could have caused that
change and so I think the first step for
everyone out there is just to believe
that you can accomplish something
because once you believe that you know
you’re half the weight are actually
doing something thank you so much for
watching I made this video because
motions char hen asked me to so if
there’s a famous entrepreneur that you
want me to profile next leave it in the
comments below and I’ll see what I can
do I’d also love to know which of
Aaron’s top 10 rules had the biggest
impact on you leave it in the comments
and I’ll join in the discussion thank
you so much for watching
do you believe and I’ll see you soon
entrepreneur organizer and Internet
activist he was involved in the
development of the web feed format
system RSS and the social news sharing
site reddit he founded the group demand
progress which campaigned against a Stop
Online Privacy Act
he’s Aaron Swartz and here are his top
ten rules for success you know feel very
strongly that it’s not enough to just
live in the world as it is to just kind
of take what you’re given and you know
follow the things that adults told you
to do and you know your parents told you
to do and the society tells you to do I
think you should always be questioning
you know I take this very scientific
attitude that everything you’ve learned
is just provisional that you know it’s
always open to recantation or refutation
or questioning and I think the same
applies to society and I you know felt
growing up you know I slowly had this
process of realizing that all the things
around me that people had told me were
just the natural way things were the way
things always would be weren’t natural
at all they were things that could be
changed and they were things that more
importantly were wrong and should change
and once I realized that there was
really kind of no going back I couldn’t
fool myself into saying oh I’m just
going to go work for a business and
ignore all that once I realized that
there were real serious problems
fundamental problems that I could do
something to address I didn’t see a way
to to forget that I didn’t see a way not
to do not I repeat do not underestimate
how much your users will help you to
define your product if you launch
without having significant user feedback
time you’ve essentially thrown away a
massive and free focus creep study and I
think that’s very important we all kind
of assume when we’re going into startups
that we have this great brilliant idea
that if although we make it just the way
it is in our heads everyone will love us
and give us money and we’ll be
successful in famous and in reality
that’s just not how it works you hear
stories all the time of people like
flicker
their idea was completely wrong going
into it changes 360 degrees spun around
tried something completely different and
the more you postpone that the more you
postpone interacting with real people
and confronting your idea with the test
of reality the more time you’re just
wasting working on an idea that won’t
actually be successful instead the
important thing is to get it out there
fast confront it with
real people real users and figure out
what makes those people happy I think my
main reaction to it was kind of being
excited about it right part of what made
it magical was finding other people to
connect with and the more and more
people who are there the more people we
had to connect with the more interesting
pages they were to visit the more stuff
that was online I mean you know you
would search for stuff and the vast
majority of the time nothing would come
back because there were only a handful
of people writing stuff for the internet
and so is everybody started putting
things up on the Internet is every
company had a webpage you know you could
suddenly instead of I remember it used
to be so annoying you would open up the
phone book and find a store and dial the
store’s number and ask them you know how
later you open and now you could just
type in their domain name right and
there would be their hours location and
their menu it would all be there you
wouldn’t have to you know at your
fingertips you wouldn’t have to talk to
anybody it would just be instantly
available and I remember you know like
just I couldn’t wait until the whole
world was on the Internet and I never
had to call anybody again
like I said I got interested in in
educational stuff I don’t think I really
got involved in a political campaign I
spent a lot of time you know after that
wondering what it is that I could really
affect you know I did a lot of writing
and a lot of reading but a lot of this
stuff I read about social change you
know seemed to come from this model you
know in in the revolutions in the 60s
people thought oh if we just get enough
people together you know who are angry
then all of a sudden magically this
revolution will happen and will take
over the country and you know it just
didn’t make sense to me I think it you
know now I’m having more background more
context I think it came out of this
experience of watching the Soviet Union
where because the Soviet Union was so
underdeveloped and you know there were
very many political structures in place
it was true that a small group of people
getting a bunch of people angry could
kind of take over the whole country and
I just don’t think that can happen in
developed countries like the US or
Ireland so I began wondering what is it
that you can do in developed countries
you know everything seems so ineffective
and so powerless and it wasn’t until
just recently that I started thinking
okay Dino net provides this opportunity
now to raise money to get candidates
elected you know it used to be there was
just no way for a small group of people
to go up against the power of big money
but one of the things we’ve seen that P
triple see is that you know there’s just
a cup
of us who work there and in the past
year you know using nothing basically
computers and you know our own
apartments we’ve gotten 300,000 people
to join our list and raised 1.25 million
dollars I mean that’s just you know
three people were able to make a huge
difference like that and that I think
means the internet really provides this
chance where we can start taking on big
corporations
what made Reddit grow was people
spreading it by word-of-mouth saying you
know this is a site I really like I
found some cool links on it you should
check it out and what happened would the
way the way to get people to do that was
fit for it to be a site that they came
back to you day after day it became part
of their routine that they felt
comfortable with
and whenever we added features that
meant changing something and whenever
you change something you know your users
tend to get mad at you they liked it the
way you know they were used to the way
it worked before and so they think they
liked it the way it worked before and
they were quibble about any little
changes they you make because it’s clear
that things can be changed it makes them
feel uncomfortable that this site
they’ve gotten used to is changing so I
think by having a solid stable site each
day that made them feel more comfortable
with it and more comfortable about
sharing it and it was that sharing that
got us all our traffic because I think
about the creative processes everything
is built on something else you know
Shakespeare stories were built on
traditional legends and folk tales right
modern stuff is built on Shakespeare
everything builds on something else
there’s no completely new creative thing
if only because if you wrote something
completely new nobody would understand
it I mean we’ll have to use words that
were developed by someone else we use
ideas that were developed by someone
else everything is this process of
pulling things together and recombining
them and so what’s worrying about these
sort of copyright police is that they
want to prevent recombination they want
to have the law come in and say
recombination isn’t legal right that
only you know you have to get a license
for every single thing you use well if
you do that you stifle creativity it’s
almost impossible to get a license for
every single thing you use I mean
imagine if every word you use you had to
call up the person who came up with that
word or if they’re dead they’re
descendants and say can I have
permission to use this word I mean you
never get through a sentence and so
similarly we see creativity stifled you
know songs pull samples from all sorts
of different songs imagine if you had to
call up each person that you borrowed a
note from or a tune from or a sample
from and get permission
all sorts of music would become
impossible we become illegal and I think
that’s what we’re seeing in the wider
culture is that this notion that become
a permission asking society that every
time you do something you have to ask
permission I mean that’s you know the
basically against the freedom culture we
have here that’s the opposite of a free
country the idea that America is you
know unless it’s specifically outlawed
you get to do it the idea of copyright
laws these people want to propose it is
unless you specifically get permission
you just can’t say it
the thing that you know really got me
thinking along these lines was right
before I went to college I read two
books I read a book moral mazes by
Robert jockle which is a study of how
corporations work and it’s it’s actually
a fascinating book the sociologist he
kind of picks the corporation at random
and just goes and studies the middle
managers you know not the people who do
any of the grunt work and not the big
decision makers just the people whose
job is to make sure the things
day-to-day get done and he shows how
even though they’re all perfectly
reasonable people perfectly nice people
you know you’d be happy to meet any of
them all the things that they were
accomplishing we’re just incredibly evil
right so you have you know these people
just this average corporation right
they’re making decisions to blow out the
workers and their factories eardrums to
poison the lakes and the lagoons nearby
to make these products that were filled
with toxic chemicals that poison their
customers not because any of them were
bad people that wanted to kill their
workers in their neighborhood and their
customers but just because that was the
logic of the situation they were in
another book I read was a book
understanding power by Noam Chomsky
which kind of took the same sort of
analysis and applied it to a wider
society which said you know we’re in a
situation where it you know maybe filled
with perfectly good people but they’re
in these structures that cause them to
continually do evil to invade countries
to bomb people you know to take money
from poor people and give it to rich
people to do all these things that are
wrong and you know those books really
opened my eyes about just how bad the
society we were living it is there’s a
battle going on right now a battle to
define everything that happens on the
Internet in terms of traditional things
that the law understands is sharing a
video on BitTorrent like shoplifting
from a movie store or is it like loaning
a videotape to a friend is reloading a
web page over and over again like a
peaceful virtual
or a violent smashing of shop-windows is
the freedom to connect like freedom of
speech or like the freedom to murder
this bill would be a huge potentially
permanent loss if we lost the ability to
communicate with each other over the
Internet it would be a change to the
Bill of Rights the freedoms guaranteed
in our Constitution the freedoms our
country had been built on would be
suddenly deleted new technology instead
of bringing us greater freedom would
have snuffed out fundamental rights we’d
always taken for granted and I realized
that day talking to Peter that I
couldn’t let that happen
Aaron often wrote candidly if his
personal blog I think deeply about
things and I want others to do likewise
I work for ideas and learn from people I
don’t like excluding people I’m a
perfectionist but I won’t let that get
in the way of publication except for
education and entertainment I’m not
going to waste my time on things that
won’t have an impact I try to be friends
with everyone but a hit when you don’t
take me seriously I don’t hold grudges
it’s not productive but I learned from
my experience I want to make the world a
better place I think the most important
thing is to realize that you can
accomplish something you know I know
sometimes it feels you just feel
powerless that you’re one small person
in this world of big corporations and
big evil people and big media companies
and so on there’s just nothing you can
do but the fact is a lot of the reason
it seems like that is because people
feel powerless people are afraid to do
anything you know for a long time I felt
I watched the news and all I saw was
this this corporate propaganda and this
kind of anti octave ISM attacks and I
thought you know the news media was just
inevitably biased against us that there
was just no hope that the only solution
was to create alternative news streams
now at the p-trap I found it’s not that
the news media is inevitably biased
against us it’s that you know reporters
like all of us which is kind of lazy you
know they report the stories that people
give them and there are huge companies
that are willing to write up stories for
them in hand
to them on a silver platter so all they
have to do is type them up you know of
course they’re going to do that and it
turned out when we did the same thing
when we started writing press releases
and we started going to reporters and
pitching them stories they were just as
happy to write about us as they were
about coca-cola and so you know because
I had believed so long the change was
impossible it precluded me from taking
any actions that could have caused that
change and so I think the first step for
everyone out there is just to believe
that you can accomplish something
because once you believe that you know
you’re half the weight are actually
doing something thank you so much for
watching I made this video because
motions char hen asked me to so if
there’s a famous entrepreneur that you
want me to profile next leave it in the
comments below and I’ll see what I can
do I’d also love to know which of
Aaron’s top 10 rules had the biggest
impact on you leave it in the comments
and I’ll join in the discussion thank
you so much for watching
do you believe and I’ll see you soon
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