We’re releasing the files for O’Reilly’s Open Government book by Laurel Ruma.
From the post:
I’ve read many eloquent eulogies from people who knew Aaron Swartz better than I did, but he was also a Foo and contributor to Open Government. So, we’re doing our part at O’Reilly Media to honor Aaron by posting the Open Government book files for free for anyone to download, read and share.
The files are posted on the O’Reilly Media GitHub account as PDF, Mobi, and EPUB files for now. There is a movement on the Internet (#PDFtribute) to memorialize Aaron by posting research and other material for the world to access, and we’re glad to be able to do this.
You can find the book here: github.com/oreillymedia/open_government
Daniel Lathrop, my co-editor on Open Government, says “I think this is an important way to remember Aaron and everything he has done for the world.” We at O’Reilly echo Daniel’s sentiment.
Be sure to read Chapter 25, “When Is Transparency Useful?”, by the late Aaron Swartz.
It includes this passage:
…When you create a regulatory agency, you put together a group of people whose job is to solve some problem. They’re given the power to investigate who’s breaking the law and the authority to punish them. Transparency, on the other hand, simply shifts the work from the government to the average citizen, who has neither the time nor the ability to investigate these questions in any detail, let alone do anything about it. It’s a farce: a way for Congress to look like it has done something on some pressing issue without actually endangering its corporate sponsors.
As a tribute to Aaron, are you going to dump data on the WWW or enable the calling of “more equal than others” pigs to account?
[…] Here is an interface that: …shifts the work from the [Sunlight Foundation] to the average citizen, who has neither the time nor the ability to investigate these questions in any detail, let alone do anything about it. It’s a farce: a way for [Sunlight Foundation] to look like it has done something on some pressing issue without actually endangering its corporate sponsors. (O’Reilly’s Open Government book ["…more equal than others" pigs] […]
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