Remember Aaron Swartz

Hi folks,

I was crushed when I saw the news Saturday morning, I’m so sorry for your loss. This is a tragic loss for all of humanity.

I didn’t know Aaron well, but we had lunch a few times over the years when I worked at Google, and I would see him at conferences every now and then.

One quick memory — it was ~May, 2005 and I remember seeing on his weblog that his hard drive had crashed. A few of us from the Blogger team at Google paypal’d him some money to help replace it. Attached is a screenshot of his brief response — this is the first time I’d ever communicated with him, but I was already in awe of his technical accomplishments back then.

I followed his work over the years since and always knew him to be one of the good guys, campaigning for the right things. I wish I could have contributed more to his work and efforts.

Lots of love, -Eric Case Woodside, California