The Problem At 6:30 am Sam Perry and Thomas Kowalski were staring speechless at the screen in their improvised computer lab on the second floor of a terraced house in Salford, Greater Manchester. The lines the computer was producing right under their eyes could not be mistaken. Despite the earliness of the time of day, the atmosphere floated in the small, humming, stuffy room mid-way between awe and disbelief. “How long has this been going on?” Kowalski wanted to know. “It must have started last night, after I last checked, before I went to bed,” Perry replied. Since the beginning of the Aaron Swartz Project, he was functioning on a five-hour-sleep basis and lots of strong, black coffee with a handful of lumps of sugar. This used to be his study. He knew that it was more than likely that he would not be able to work here again…
