Be An Aaron Swarz Day Volunteer (and Get You and 2 Friends In Free)

This is for the San Francisco hackathon and opening night party.

TICKETS

We’re training volunteers every Friday at the Internet Archive, leading up to our November 9-11 event.

We need folks from everything from taking tickets to being a back up sound person, runners, hackathon & reception set up and break down and much much more. Get some experience and learn about what goes on behind the scenes.

Plus if you volunteer for part of Saturday or Sunday you’ll get yourself and two friends in for free. ^_^

If you are interested, please write us at aaronswartzday@gmail.com by Wednesday at 11am, each week, to reserve a spot.

Okay hope to see you Friday :) (And be sure to RSVP :)

To be clear: these volunteers are for the San Francisco Hackathon & Evening Event, and also for our Opening Night Party at the DNA Lounge.

(Below! Just announced!)

Thanks!!

 

 

Raw Thought: Aaron’s Patented Demotivational Seminar

Want to actually make a difference? You’ll have to buck the system instead of joining it.

– Aaron Swartz, March 27, 2007

Aaron’s Patented Demotivational Seminar

(from his “Raw Thought” Blog)

Let’s say you’re a US Supreme Court Justice, able to change the laws of the world’s only superpower with the stroke of your pen. Well, big deal. Had you not been appointed to the Supreme Court the President who appointed you would have found some other judge who would have made the same changes to the law. Yeah, you get to wear a robe and feel powerful, but when you look at the cold, hard, scientific facts, you’re not making a lick of difference in the world.

Want to actually make a difference? You’ll have to buck the system instead of joining it.

Here’s the whole post from March 27, 2007:

Thousands of people out there are willing to give you a motivational seminar, but only Aaron’s Patented Demotivational Seminars are going to actually admit they demotivate you. I’ve collected thousands of actual facts from real scientists and the verdict is in: people don’t matter, except for a couple of rare exceptions, and you’re not one of them. Sorry.

Let’s start at the beginning, shall we? The universe is a bunch of random particles shooting through space following a handful of simple laws. Through completely random and unintentional properties, some of those particles bounced together to form you. But, I swear, it was a total accident. They didn’t even realize they were doing it at the time and if they knew they’d probably feel kind of guilty about it.

For a long time, it was pretty clear that most people didn’t matter. The average person didn’t leave their town or village and so only interacted with a small handful of people who lived near them, most of whom found them annoying. The Internet has changed all that. Now the average person doesn’t leave their computer and so only interacts with a small handful of spammers who read their LiveJournal, most of whom find them annoying. Luckily for posterity, their LiveJournal will probably disappear within their lifetime due to a hard drive crash or some other kind of poor server maintenance.

But let’s say you want to make a difference in the world. You can learn a skill and go into a profession, where you get bossed around and told exactly what to do by people more powerful than you. (Obeying them is called “professionalism”.) It’s completely futile; had you not gone into the professional (or if you decide to disobey orders) they would have found someone else to do the exact same thing.

The same is true even if you’re the one giving orders. Imagine about the most powerful job you can think of. Let’s say you’re a US Supreme Court Justice, able to change the laws of the world’s only superpower with the stroke of your pen. Well, big deal. Had you not been appointed to the Supreme Court the President who appointed you would have found some other judge who would have made the same changes to the law. Yeah, you get to wear a robe and feel powerful, but when you look at the cold, hard, scientific facts, you’re not making a lick of difference in the world.

Want to actually make a difference? You’ll have to buck the system instead of joining it.

*****

Come to this year’s Aaron Swartz Day Weekend at the Internet Archive!

DJ Spooky’s Introduction to Oscar Micheaux’s “Body and Soul” at SF MOMA

DJ Spooky will be speaking and performing at this year’s Aaron Swartz Day & International Hackathon Evening Event, in San Francisco, Saturday, November 10, 2018, 8pm.   TICKETS

DJ Spooky Looks Deeper Into the Films of Cinema Pioneer Oscar Micheaux

DJ Spooky at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, July 12, 2018.

From the transcription of DJ Spooky’s introduction for “Body and Soul,” by Lisa Rein for Mondo 2000:

So, Oscar Micheaux was infuriated by Birth of a Nation, and so was the NAACP. What ended up happening is that they protested it, and created a whole dynamic where they would have almost riots and controversy. They actually invented the term “blockbuster” – because people would line up around the block to see the film.

There’s a lot of legacy in Oscar Micheaux because he ended up responding against Birth of a Nation by making his own film. His most famous film is In Our Gates…

In this weird Trump Dystopian Bizarre Feverish Lunatic Dream of White Supremacy that we’re kind of trying to deprogram out of, these kinds of films, and these kinds of gatherings, are where people from different perspectives, races, classes, come together and think: “How does cinema change our vision of things?”

– DJ Spooky, during his introduction for “Body and Soul,” at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, July 12, 2018.

TICKETS