[Paisleychick-lj] I know people in this article....

[Beatrice M's blog]

I was reading Aaron Swartz's blog on my lj friends page and went and [read the article][1] that Aaron was talking about and my I was tickled to read that [Ben Sittler][2] was mentioned as well. I wonder how the reporter gathered her victims profiles? Do Ben and Aaron know each other? It's a small small world.

> Aaron Swartz dropped out of high school after one year to study on his own. Then he dropped out of college after one year to seek his high-tech fortune. He was still in his teens a year later when he hit the jackpot, selling his startup in October to Wired Digital for an undisclosed but lottery-like payout.  
  
With his boyish mien and more geek credentials than engineers twice his age, the suddenly wealthy Swartz belongs to a new generation of young, brainy geeks who began booting up and logging on when their friends were still watching "Sesame Street." Before they were old enough to drive, they landed paying gigs. Now that another high-tech boom is heating up Silicon Valley, more of these technologically developed but underage techies are dropping out and starting up....   
  
Ben Sittler, a 30-year-old who dropped out of college after nearly five years of enjoying mathematics and computer science but blowing requirements like English and geology, says the experiences of dropouts vary greatly. "I've met quite a few in the valley," he said. "It works well for some people and not for others. Overall, I would recommend dropping out only to people who feel they have something better to do."  
  
Sittler finds himself in good company at file-sharing service BitTorrent in San Francisco. His boss, co-founder and software prodigy Bram Cohen, first used a computer when he was 5 and designed a computer version of a popular children's game by the time he was in seventh grade. Cohen dropped out of college after struggling for two years....  
  
But some -- including Swartz -- decide Silicon Valley can't wait. Swartz built his first Web site when he was 13, an online encyclopedia written by the people who use it. Bored in class, Swartz convinced his parents to let him study at home after his freshman year of high school. "I couldn't take it. It seemed pointless and silly. It wasn't so much about learning. It was about sitting in desks and following orders."  
  
Swartz enrolled in a handful of classes, from logic to number theory, at a community college and embarked on projects that challenged him intellectually and took him around the country.  
  
In school, adults assumed he couldn't be up to anything that interesting. On the Internet, he was taken seriously. At 14, he helped develop the popular Web content- distribution software RSS. Soon he was in demand, attending technology conferences and concentrating on such major efforts as creating universal ways to exchange online information through a group founded by Tim Berners-Lee, considered the father of the Web. In 2002, he helped Creative Commons, a nonprofit organization at Stanford formed by law professor Lawrence Lessig and other legal scholars to encourage the legal sharing of writing, music and other works.  
  
It was Lessig who encouraged Swartz to attend Stanford, where he majored in sociology. Toward the end of his freshman year, Graham e-mailed Swartz to suggest he apply for the Summer Founders Program, which offers three months of seed funding from Y Combinator. Swartz moved to Cambridge to work on his own startup, but later joined forces with Reddit.com, which taps "the wisdom of crowds" by letting users submit and rank news and other online content. He dropped out of Stanford.  
  
Over the next year, Swartz worked long hours in cramped quarters hunched over a small screen, his only glimpse of the outside world through small windows that opened up on chalky skies. Over time, the Reddit site grew in popularity. Then came the life-changing offer from Wired Digital.  
  
At first, the prospect of never again scrounging for loose change under threadbare couch cushions thrilled him. Then Swartz succumbed to feelings of anxiety and guilt over the windfall. Even now that he is more comfortable with his newfound fortune and levitating status in the online world, Swartz says he won't turn into another boom kid.  
  
Fancy new car? "I don't know how to drive," Swartz wrote on his blog, [Raw Thought][3]. Big house in the suburbs? "I like living in small apartments." Expensive clothes? "I've worn a T-shirt and jeans practically every day of my life." Hanging with the cool kids? "I'm so shy I don't even hang out with the people I know now."  
  
Swartz moved to San Francisco a few weeks ago on his 20th birthday. After a two-year stint at Wired, Swartz says, he plans to head back to academia. But, chances are, he'll return to the startup drawing board. Swartz may have attained the Silicon Valley dream but -- like so many of his peers -- he's not done dreaming.

   [1]: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/12/03/BUGTFMNO261.DTL
   [2]: http://bsittler.livejournal.com/
   [3]: http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/

URL: http://paisleychick.livejournal.com/273007.html