The Bard of The Internet

On rare occasions, a (social) angel appears among us who appears to have unlimited energy and generosity to offer to thousands of friends and collaborators; and who is able to engage authentically with them about their lives and projects long after the rest of us would have curled up into fetal balls from too much peopleness. Barlow was one of those angels. I hope he’s having a unique and trippy out-of-body-and-brain experience and — if there be afterlife rewards — he’s getting back the Good Lovin’ he gave us.
(R.U. Sirius)

Last night before I was about to go to sleep I notice this tweet from R.U. Sirius:

One year ago today we lost our friend John Perry Barlow https://t.co/DbWuuYpVtQ … We hope he's stirring things up in some other reality... pic.twitter.com/dbqL1eRLRj

— MONDO 2000 (@2000_mondo) February 8, 2019

I thought to myself, my God has it been a year already. From there I went into a digital rabbit hole and danced with The Bard of The Internet John Perry Barlow. I hope that he has achieved a kind of virtual immortality, his voice and image as near as the click of a mouse. Ghost-like, he haunts the Internet, a talking head on YouTube, the articulate Bard of The Internet.

I can still remember when I read: John Perry Barlow, EFF Co-Founder and Author of 1996 Cyberspace Manifesto, Dies at 70. John Perry Barlow passed away quietly in his sleep this morning (2/7/2018). Barlow was a poet, a cowboy, a philosopher, visionary, and the founder of Electronic Frontier Foundation.

“It is no exaggeration to say that major parts of the Internet we all know and love today exist and thrive because of Barlow’s vision and leadership,” wrote the executive director of the EFF, Cindy Cohn.

I was shocked and numb, generally speaking, I try to be indifferent to the latest passing of a celebrity. Its a lost and it sucks, but if I never met them or really know them why invest too much time in it. So I may read or listen to their work and move on. I figure there is enough post about that person, and I'll leave it to the ones that know better than me.

But John Perry Barlow is a legit pioneer, visionary and a personal hero of mines. One of the first things I ever mashup into a video, in the early days of learning and experimenting with video editing. Was a clip of John Perry Barlow for this Minds promo video I made. Because it just made sense to me, John Perry Barlow, the man who co-founded the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Author 1996 CyberspaceManifesto, I had to use his voice and vision to guide me through cyberspace.

Ideas don't die they just multiply.
They're a candle, They're a candle,
Cut them down a million times,
They still burn bright and stand, yo!

Something in me keeps pulling and pushing towards these ideas. And every time I listen and/or read Visionaries as Barlow and any other cyberdelic pioneers, I integrate them within me.

But Barlow also knew that new technology could create and empower evil as much as it could create and empower good. He made a conscious decision to focus on dreaming up a brighter future. And that's why it's important to listen to this better Angel of our digital nature.

---

I love what Zach Leary wrote about JP Barlow:

Barlow entered my life 30 years ago when I was 14 years old. I was just a gangly confused teenager trying to find my way in the world. During the span of these 30 years there were phases in my relationship with Barlow where we’d be in each other’s orbit frequently and fondly, possibly sharing a laugh at a trademark “Barlow Frenzy.” Many years could also pass, sometimes awkwardly, that would eventually come to an end in the form of a loving reunion. It mustbe said that elements of these eras sometimes had their fair share of complex tensions having to do with the very strong personalities of both my family and his. My time with Barlow is not without its warts. They were gracefully balanced out with countless intimate moments of dancing in each other’s consciousness that could only be achieved by Barlow’s brilliance at understanding complex eco-systems and then knowing how to rebuild them.

John Perry Barlow was an open-access advocate before that was a thing, which brings me to the reason why I felt the need to create another post on him, The Internet Archive's John Perry Barlow collection. The archive of his work at the Internet Archive is full of what Bruce Sterling calls "a lot of weird, flaky, broke-the-mold stuff."

It may be truer to say the most of what he wrote and said was less an attempt to nail reality as it was to reshape reality. He was an unashamed aspirationalist. In that regard, Barlow had much in common with many prophets, gurus, visionaries, magicians, innovators, charlatans, and politicians in that he placed greater emphasis on what could be rather than what is. And he believed, as those just mentioned do and most journalists and scientists don't, that you can create reality with your words.

Highlights from Barlow's Legacy:

• A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace by John Perry Barlow

• Being in Nothingness: Virtual Reality and the Pioneers of Cyberspace by John Perry Barlow

• HOW AN ARMY OF DEADHEADS (AND THEIR LSD) INVENTED SILICON VALLEY

• IT’S BEEN 20 YEARS SINCE THIS MAN DECLARED CYBERSPACE INDEPENDENCE

• JOHN PERRY BARLOW: ANOTHER ONE OF MY PERSONAL HEROES