A testament to a technical genius and a passionate activist, Aaron Swartz: his essential writings on internet culture, hacktivism and the freedom of information

In January 2013, Aaron Swartz, under arrest and threatened with thirty-five years of imprisonment for downloading material from the JSTOR database, committed suicide. He was twenty-six years old. But in that time he had changed the world we live in: reshaping the Internet, questioning our assumptions about intellectual property, and creating some of the tools we use in our daily online lives.

Besides being a technical genius and a passionate activist, he was also an insightful, compelling, and cutting critic of the politics of the Web. In this collection of his writings that spans over a decade he shows his passion for and in-depth knowledge of intellectual property, copyright, and the architecture of the Internet. The Boy Who Could Change the World contains the life's work of one of the most original minds of our time.

"What a bittersweet exhilaration you feel re-reading Swartz's impossibly brilliant, capacious writings all in one place. This volume makes clear what those of us who knew Aaron already grasped: when we lost Aaron, we lost one of the most exciting minds of our time." - Chris Hayes

"Swartz left behind an impressive body of writing that still has the power to rally others... Clear, well read and sourced" - Financial Times