Rickard Falkvinge
| Rick Falkvinge | |
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Rick Falkvinge
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| Born |
Dick Greger Augustsson 21 January 1972 Gothenburg, Sweden |
| Occupation | IT entrepreneur, politician |
| Political party | Pirate Party |
| Website | falkvinge.net |
Rick Falkvinge (born Dick Greger Augustsson on 21 January 1972) is a Swedish information technology entrepreneur and founder of the Swedish Pirate Party. He is currently a political evangelist with the party, spreading the ideas across the world.
Falkvinge grew up in Ruddalen, Gothenburg, and studied Natural Sciences at Göteborgs Högre Samskola. During his high school years, he was active in Moderat Skolungdom and Moderata Ungdomsförbundet, the youth wings of the Moderaterna party in Sweden. His passion for technology was visible at an early age, and he would spend time as a toddler just pressing doorbell buttons in electronics stores.
His first computer was a Commodore VIC-20, where he wasn't content just pressing its buttons, but also opened it up and took it apart, to study its inner workings. He learned how to disable the system calls, and learned all relevant memory positions. His interest for computers as a technological phenomenon was as large as his fascination for the possibility of using computers as tools. He has likened this to amateur radio enthusiasts and their interest for the technology and its applications alike.
His VIC-20 would soon be replaced by a Commodore 64, the most sold computer model ever. He started swapping files early, and continued the mixtape tradition with his friends, only using disks instead. He started attending copyparties, where people brought their computer and a box of disks, and copied files between one another: images, games, texts, programs.
Falkvinge created his first company, Infoteknik (literally Infotechnology), in 1988 at the age of 16. The inefficiency in administrative business tasks irritated him, and he wanted to digitize the world.
In 1994 to 1998, he was active as an entrepreneur with five employees in software development in Gothenburg, Kalmar and Strömsund.
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