Post
Aaron Swartz joined the RSS working group when he was 13. At 15 he became a foundational member of Creative Commons. He was working on precursors to markdown at 16.
We should not be locking young people out of our communities and keeping them away from digital tools that can open doors for them, expand their knowledge, sharpen their skills, and help them grow into well-rounded adults.
Qp @nathandyer y'a que moi qui suis gênée par ce pouet.
@nathandyer Also RIP Aaron Swartz
@nathandyer this ❤️ for so many people I know, online communities in the late 90s / early 00s were a way to find your people and learn so many different things.
Maybe instead of shutting kids out, we should make the people at the top of the food chain accountable for their fuck ups in creating tooling and platforms that are addictive ON PURPOSE, where misinformation & abuse are rampant.
Somebody will take Aaron as an example for the opposite: "well, if he hadn't had access as a kid, he'd still ne alive." /s
Swartz's bandwidth put him in the ether among the digital dragons and not beneath, even at thirteen.
Average kids can surely not compete against digital manipulation any better today.
@nathandyer
I'm not sure about the point of the post.
1. anecdotal evidence is not a solid back up for an argument.
2. I don't think anybody is blocking young people from tinkering at home?
3. Putting hurdles in the way adds motivation to learn or find creative ways how to circumvent them.
4. Big corporations have teams of psychologists convincing people to spend time on their platforms. The assumption that young people are cleverer than them is disrespecting the psychological profession.
@nathandyer
I agree that we should allow kids access to technology.
But Aaron Schwartz of all people never got to grow into a "well-rounded adult" since he killed himself at 26. That's a rather unfortunate choice of words for that particular example.
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