Aaron Swartz, a prolific computer programmer and information rights activist, once developed a website that would provide answers to just about any question, free for anyone to augment and access. It was Wikipedia before there was a Wikipedia. Swartz was a pre-teen prodigy at the time; by age 26, he was dead.
The Internet’s Own Boy is Brian Knappenberger’s (We are Legion: The Story of the Hacktivists) account of Swartz’s immensely abbreviated life as one of the most vital and controversial contributors to the progress of the Internet and, more notably, the availability of its contents. A distinctively human tale in a world of software development, Own Boy succeeds on many levels: it’s a compact, descriptive history of a nascent Internet, a frightening case study in the power of government, and a collection of interviews with the most prominent voices of the Web Age. But most important—and most effective to the storytelling—The Internet’s Own Boy is about a brilliant youngster who was becoming a brilliant man before he took his own life.
Knappenberger smartly begins his film with the people who know Swartz best and miss him most, his family. We get home video of a kindergarten-aged Swartz with his brother or parents, happily exhibiting the thirst for education that would make him one of the most respected computer minds in the country.
Witnessing a person’s happier, simpler childhood days carries its own built-in melancholy. But hearing Swartz’s family talk about him is simply heartbreaking. Knappenberger knows the delicate emotions that are at play and, like he does reviewing Swartz’s achievements, he never pushes too far.
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