Call to action kicks off second Aaron Swartz hackathon
On the occasion of what would've been Aaron Swartz's 27th birthday, the hacker who was driven to suicide earlier this year by government prosecution was memorialized with a clay statue of his likeness at the Internet Archive.
The half-sized representation of Swartz bears his scruffy, unshaven likeness and neck-length hair, but also an Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) T-shirt and a laptop with an inscription on its lid: "10,000,000,000,000,000 Internet Archive 2012 bytes archived." The Internet Archive crossed 10 petabytes of data archived for free in October 2012.
Employees of the non-profit, headquartered on Funston Avenue in the often-foggy Richmond District, are honored with statues after they've worked for the Archive for at least three years. Joining the 100 or so clay denizens of the Great Room on Friday evening were around 150 friends and hackers inspired by Swartz, who gathered to remember his life and inaugurate the second worldwide hackathon since his death.
