Internet Pioneer, John Perry Barlow, Passes

[engine]

Co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), John Perry Barlow has passed away.

Barlow’s lasting legacy is that he devoted his life to making the Internet into “a world that all may enter without privilege or prejudice accorded by race, economic power, military force, or station of birth . . . a world where anyone, anywhere may express his or her beliefs, no matter how singular, without fear of being coerced into silence or conformity.”

[eff.org...]

[phranque]

i first knew of john perry barlow (pre-EFF) as the lyricist for bob weir of the grateful dead.
for most people that would have been legacy enough...

you imagine me sipping champagne from your boot
for taste of your elegant pride
i may be going to hell in a bucket, babe
but at least I'm enjoying the ride, at least I'll enjoy the ride.

[engine]

Yes, that's exactly what i was thinking, too.

[iamlost]

I encountered him initially through his 1996 A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace [eff.org]. On reading it I sent him an email (yes, those were quite different times; of course he was quite a different person) and over the next decade we 'corresponded' perhaps a dozen times despite, perhaps due to, our somewhat askew Canadian social democrat, American libertarian views.

He was primarily concerned, as seen in the Declaration, with state government intervention while I worried more about corporate. Sadly, we were both right.

A fascinating, quietly influential man.