RIP, John Perry Barlow
Posted: Fri Feb 09, 2018 2:53 am
Internet visionary, Grateful Dead lyricist, rancher, co-founder of the EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation), early columnist and associate of Wired Magazine, and many other monickers, mythological or not, John Perry Barlow was a renaissance man for our age. He pioneered digital rights, anticipating the future of impending digital wrongs as ignorance and evil learned the ways of the net, always trying to keep the internet intelligent, free and a few steps ahead of the agents of entropy, chaos, and disorder. Barlow died Thursday at the age of 70.
One of my few real-live heroes, Barlow gave me direction in the early days of the Net. Following his lead, I learned to give of my time, skill and knowledge without expecting anything in return except a better world for my efforts. Somehow the money came, anyway, and probably more than I'd have made if I had set my goals according to financial desires. The Whole Earth movement, with which Barlow was also affiliated, published a lot of "zen-like" teachings that seeped into my subconscious and became a part of my life without my really knowing it. When you read idealistic writing by people like Barlow, you think "nice, but how do you DO that?" Turns out that just by respecting it, you end up doing it. Today I mourn the passing of one of my honest-to-goodness teachers, one I never met and would probably not have acknowledged if you'd asked me to name my most important teachers. Despite the subtle way he became a part of my life, John Perry Barlow WAS one of my most important teachers. I may have read a dozen things he wrote. Maybe more or less. It doesn't matter if it was ONE thing; when the student is ready, the teacher appears, and I was ready. There, in front of me in Wired, or in writings at the EFF, or in various other places, the name John Perry Barlow was an easy name to remember. It evoked a sense of the authority of "right." You know right when you see it. It's simple and straightforward. And he wrote from that place of self-assured rightness. You read it and think, "I can do that."
Some of it sounds quaint now. Remember that when we first began using the internet for widespread interaction with people outside the small cadre for whom it was created — and I'm talking really about the introduction of TCP/IP and PPP, which made it possible to divide a single internet account into hundreds of accounts, democratizing the cost and directions of the net — there was no place where average people could be heard by those not present in the same room. One might get an occasional letter to the editor in the paper or a magazine, but generally speaking, the written or spoken word, whether printed, recorded, videotaped, or otherwise broadcast, came from the top and was distributed down to the masses. The masses could not reply or discuss it. This whole idea of my writing John Perry Barlow's eulogy, not having met him or known him, and being read by people I do not know or have not met, was as foreign as a phone you carry in your pocket, that takes pictures, sends messages, and does thousands of other things. The only place where such a thing even seemed possible was in Dick Tracy comics, or in Star Wars or Star Trek movies or other sci-fi fantasies. Suddenly the future was here, and it started with only a few people knowing about it. Barlow was one of those. Just as suddenly, the weight of that responsibility hit the early netizens hard: how do we promote access to and by all? Some rose to the challenge of guiding the early development of the net, and Barlow was one of the strongest of those voices.
He's gone, now, and we can be thankful that he was here when we needed him. Just discussing our craft in an internet forum, kept alive by the will and vision of our own James Steele, we are all participating in activities made possible because of early activism of those who saw the Internet's potential for both good and harm, and chose to fight to keep it good. Despite the chipping away of that over the years, it's still an overwhelmingly good force within our lives, and Barlow is one of those who will go down in the digital history books as an internet guidepost. And the lyricist of Cassidy, Black Throated Wind, Mexicali Blues, and many more.
RIP, John Perry Barlow.
—Shooshie
One of my few real-live heroes, Barlow gave me direction in the early days of the Net. Following his lead, I learned to give of my time, skill and knowledge without expecting anything in return except a better world for my efforts. Somehow the money came, anyway, and probably more than I'd have made if I had set my goals according to financial desires. The Whole Earth movement, with which Barlow was also affiliated, published a lot of "zen-like" teachings that seeped into my subconscious and became a part of my life without my really knowing it. When you read idealistic writing by people like Barlow, you think "nice, but how do you DO that?" Turns out that just by respecting it, you end up doing it. Today I mourn the passing of one of my honest-to-goodness teachers, one I never met and would probably not have acknowledged if you'd asked me to name my most important teachers. Despite the subtle way he became a part of my life, John Perry Barlow WAS one of my most important teachers. I may have read a dozen things he wrote. Maybe more or less. It doesn't matter if it was ONE thing; when the student is ready, the teacher appears, and I was ready. There, in front of me in Wired, or in writings at the EFF, or in various other places, the name John Perry Barlow was an easy name to remember. It evoked a sense of the authority of "right." You know right when you see it. It's simple and straightforward. And he wrote from that place of self-assured rightness. You read it and think, "I can do that."
Some of it sounds quaint now. Remember that when we first began using the internet for widespread interaction with people outside the small cadre for whom it was created — and I'm talking really about the introduction of TCP/IP and PPP, which made it possible to divide a single internet account into hundreds of accounts, democratizing the cost and directions of the net — there was no place where average people could be heard by those not present in the same room. One might get an occasional letter to the editor in the paper or a magazine, but generally speaking, the written or spoken word, whether printed, recorded, videotaped, or otherwise broadcast, came from the top and was distributed down to the masses. The masses could not reply or discuss it. This whole idea of my writing John Perry Barlow's eulogy, not having met him or known him, and being read by people I do not know or have not met, was as foreign as a phone you carry in your pocket, that takes pictures, sends messages, and does thousands of other things. The only place where such a thing even seemed possible was in Dick Tracy comics, or in Star Wars or Star Trek movies or other sci-fi fantasies. Suddenly the future was here, and it started with only a few people knowing about it. Barlow was one of those. Just as suddenly, the weight of that responsibility hit the early netizens hard: how do we promote access to and by all? Some rose to the challenge of guiding the early development of the net, and Barlow was one of the strongest of those voices.
He's gone, now, and we can be thankful that he was here when we needed him. Just discussing our craft in an internet forum, kept alive by the will and vision of our own James Steele, we are all participating in activities made possible because of early activism of those who saw the Internet's potential for both good and harm, and chose to fight to keep it good. Despite the chipping away of that over the years, it's still an overwhelmingly good force within our lives, and Barlow is one of those who will go down in the digital history books as an internet guidepost. And the lyricist of Cassidy, Black Throated Wind, Mexicali Blues, and many more.
RIP, John Perry Barlow.
—Shooshie
That she was married didn’t make him put the brakes on. Luckily my wife is good and nothing transpired. Lol. RIP.