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I Love the University (Aaron Swartz's Raw Thought)

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I went to visit a friend today at MIT. The past few days I’d been reading more stuff from academia and just that morning I was reading responses to my old posts at Stanford, so academia’s siren song had been on my mind. But getting off the subway at MIT, with me full of energy after a morning jog, the sun shining brightly down, I couldn’t help but feel like I was missing something, seeing smiles on the faces of the young geniuses who were everywhere around me. Perhaps it’s natural, when doing something so greedy and practical as a startup, to pine for the idealized world of academia. Its image as a place in an idyllic location filled with smart people has always been attractive; even more so with the sense that by being there one can get smarter simply through osmosis. People describe a place of continual geekiness, of throwing chemicals into the river and building robots in free time. A magical place for hackers to just enjoy themselves. It’s not that I don’t enjoy my work; it’s just

I Love the University (Aaron Swartz's Raw Thought) Raw Thought by Aaron Swartz I Love the University I went to visit a friend today at MIT. The past few days I’d been reading more stuff from academia and just that morning I was reading responses to my old posts at Stanford, so academia’s siren song had been on my mind. But getting off the subway at MIT, with me full of energy after a morning jog, the sun shining brightly down, I couldn’t help but feel like I was missing something, seeing smiles on the faces of the young geniuses who were everywhere around me. Perhaps it&#8217

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