Artist Aims to Print Out the Whole Internet

In January this year, Internet freedom activist Aaron Swartz committed suicide while awaiting trial. Having downloaded millions of papers from digital academic journal archive JSTOR, he had been accused of computer fraud. His death caused outrage among those passionate about public access to information and inspired Internet inventor Sir Tim Berners-Lee to write, 'Aaron dead. World wanderers, we have lost a wise elder. Hackers for right, we are one down. Parents all, we have lost a child. Let us weep.'

Now, in order to honour Swartz's memory, poet Kenneth Goldsmith is planning on printing out as much of the Internet as possible. Between July 26th and August 30th, he will occupy 500 square metres of space in Mexico City, where the piles of pages will be on display. Members of the public are invited to send in as many Internet print outs as they can. Length is not an issue.

'There are many ways to go about this,' the project's Tumblr pages read. 'You can act alone (print out your own blog, Gmail inbox or spam folder) or you could organise a group of friends to print out a particular corner of the internet, say, all of Wikipedia, the entire New York Times archive, every dossier leaked by Wikileaks for starters. The more the better.'

Some argue that the concept promises to make a vital statement about our right to know; others are concerned about the potential environmental costs. A petition against the project has been started at Change.org.

[Via PSFK]