“…The day Alex killed himself, he wandered his apartment in a daze. The light streaming through the windows gave everything a golden glow, which had the odd effect of making the filth he’d become surrounded with seem cinematic…”

Disguised as fiction — even a metaphor, but it was almost a confession. I’m not sure I want to understand him more than this, but I will spend the rest of my life in admiration of him.

Too young, too soon. The loss is ours — an unspeakable loss we must try but never truly can replace in the fight for freedom of information.

Blessed with the capability to pursue countless profitable ventures, Swartz decided instead to focus his energy supporting the spread of free and open knowledge, fighting censorship, paid access that doesn’t benefit the original authors, reviving worthy texts — all ostensibly at no personal profit.

The least we, as mere mortals, can do to continue the fight, is to imagine the world he spent his life fighting for.

Because I do, all the time.