1. John Perry Barlow was an American poet, essayist, cattle rancher, and cyberlibertarian political activist who had been associated with both the Democratic and Republican parties.
52 Facts About John Perry Barlow
1. 2.
John Perry Barlow grew up on Bar Cross Ranch in Cora, Wyoming, a 22,000-acre property his great-uncle founded in 1907, and attended elementary school in a one-room schoolhouse.
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John Perry Barlow served as Wesleyan's student body president until the administration "tossed him into a sanitarium" following a drug-induced attempted suicide attack in Boston, Massachusetts.
4.
John Perry Barlow eventually finished the novel, but it was rejected by several publishers and remains unpublished.
5.
At age 15, John Perry Barlow became a student at the Fountain Valley School in Colorado Springs, Colorado.
6.
Weir and John Perry Barlow maintained a close friendship through the years.
7.
John Perry Barlow went on to facilitate the first meeting between the Grateful Dead and the Leary organization in June 1967.
8.
John Perry Barlow's father had suffered a debilitating stroke in 1966 before dying in 1972, resulting in a $700,000 business debt.
9.
John Perry Barlow became interested in collaborating with Weir at a Grateful Dead show at the Capitol Theatre in Port Chester, New York, in February 1971.
10.
In late 1971, with a deal for a solo album in hand and only two songs completed, Weir and John Perry Barlow began to write together for the first time.
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John Perry Barlow subsequently collaborated with Grateful Dead keyboardist Brent Mydland, a partnership that culminated in four songs on 1989's Built to Last.
12.
John Perry Barlow wrote one song with Mydland's successor, Vince Welnick.
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In 1986, John Perry Barlow joined The WELL, an online community then known for a strong Deadhead presence.
14.
John Perry Barlow served on the company's board of directors for several years.
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John Perry Barlow's involvement is documented in The Hacker Crackdown: Law and Disorder on the Electronic Frontier by Bruce Sterling.
16.
In 1996, John Perry Barlow was invited to speak about his work in cyberspace to a middle school classroom at North Shore Country Day School.
17.
That year, John Perry Barlow wrote "A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace", a widely disseminated creed for the Internet.
18.
In 2003, John Perry Barlow met the recently appointed Brazilian Minister of Culture Gilberto Gil at the event Tactic Media Brazil to discuss the perspectives of digital inclusion and political participation, which in the following years helped shape Brazilian governmental policy on intellectual property and digital media.
19.
John Perry Barlow decided to send all of his 100 invitations to friends in Brazil; two years later, some 11 million internet users in that country were on the social network.
20.
From 1971 to 1995, John Perry Barlow wrote lyrics for the Grateful Dead, mostly through his relationship with Weir.
21.
John Perry Barlow wrote extensively for Wired magazine, as well as The New York Times, Nerve, and Communications of the ACM.
22.
John Perry Barlow's writings include "A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace", written in response to the enactment of the Communications Decency Act in 1996.
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John Perry Barlow argued that the cyberspace legal order would reflect the ethical deliberation of the community instead of the coercive power that characterized real-space governance.
24.
John Perry Barlow is credited with popularizing of the concept of pronoia and was considered a celebrity ally of the Zippy Pronoia Tour in 1994.
25.
John Perry Barlow returned to writing lyrics, most recently with The String Cheese Incident's mandolinist and vocalist Michael Kang, including their song "Desert Dawn".
26.
John Perry Barlow was seen many times with Carolyn Garcia at their concerts mixing with the fans and members in the band, and was a close friend of String Cheese Incident producer Jerry Harrison.
27.
John Perry Barlow participated with the Chicago-based jam band Mr Blotto on their release Barlow Shanghai.
28.
John Perry Barlow was a spiritual mentor and student of Kemp Muhl and Sean Lennon, collaborating with their band The Ghost of a Saber Tooth Tiger and making a cameo in their 2014 music video "Animals".
29.
John Perry Barlow described his reason for writing these as he was about to enter adulthood, "my wariness of the pursuit of happiness might be a subtle form of treason".
30.
John Perry Barlow saw this more as a way to challenge how one perceived their life, their job, and their goals in life, and to not see achieving happiness as "an obligation [one owes] to Jefferson, the United States, or God Itself".
31.
John Perry Barlow was president of the Wyoming Outdoor Council from 1978 to 1984.
32.
John Perry Barlow was chairman of the Sublette County Master Plan Design Commission and served on the Sublette County Planning and Zoning Commission for many years; in that capacity, he was one of five ranchers who administered water distribution in the New Fork Irrigation District.
33.
John Perry Barlow was named "One of the 25 Most Influential People in Financial Services" in the June 1999 issue of FutureBanker Magazine.
34.
John Perry Barlow subsequently said that he remained a Republican, most notably during an appearance on The Colbert Report on March 26,2007, and claimed to be an anarchist.
35.
Until his death, John Perry Barlow served on the EFF's board of directors, where he was listed as a co-founder after previously serving as vice chairman.
36.
In 2012, John Perry Barlow was one of the founders of the EFF-related Freedom of the Press Foundation and served on its board of directors until his death.
37.
John Perry Barlow had several public conversations via video conference with fellow Freedom of the Press Foundation Board of Directors member Edward Snowden, and appeared in interviews with Julian Assange of WikiLeaks touting Snowden as a hero.
38.
John Perry Barlow delivered lectures and panel discussions at TWiT Live, TedxHamburg, Hamburg, Greenfest SF, Civitas, Internet Society, the USC Center on Public Diplomacy, and the European Graduate School.
39.
On September 8,2014, John Perry Barlow was the first speaker in the Art, Activism, and Technology: The 50th Anniversary of the Free Speech Movement colloquium series at University of California, Berkeley.
40.
John Perry Barlow was a collaborator on the WetheData project founded by Juliette Powell.
41.
John Perry Barlow was Vice President at Algae Systems, a Nevada-based company with a working demo-scale pilot plant in Daphne, Alabama, dedicated to commercializing novel methods at the water-energy nexus for growing microalgae offshore as a second-generation biofuels feedstock and converting it to useful crude via hydrothermal liquefaction, while simultaneously treating wastewater, reducing carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere, and producing biochar.
42.
At Startup Grind Jackson Hole on March 13,2015, John Perry Barlow said that he was motivated to team up with Algae Systems after undergoing back surgery to address pain from an old ranching injury, while he had been an advisor to Herb Allison and working to completely "electronify" financial transactions and speculative asset assembly.
43.
John Perry Barlow appeared in many films and television shows, both as an actor and as himself.
44.
John Perry Barlow was a self-ordained minister who performed baptisms and weddings.
45.
John Perry Barlow married Elaine Parker John Perry Barlow in 1977, and the couple had three daughters: Amelia Rose, Anna Winter, and Leah Justine.
46.
Elaine and John Perry Barlow separated in 1992 and divorced in 1995.
47.
John Perry Barlow was engaged to Cynthia Horner, a doctor he met in 1993 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco while she was attending a psychiatry conference and John Perry Barlow was participating in a Steve Jobs comedy roast at a convention for the NeXT Computer.
48.
John Perry Barlow died unexpectedly in 1994 while asleep on a flight from Los Angeles to New York City, days before her 30th birthday, from a heart arrhythmia apparently caused by undetected viral myocarditis.
49.
John Perry Barlow describes this period in his life in the This American Life episode "Conventions", from August 29,1997.
50.
John Perry Barlow was a friend and former roommate of the technology entrepreneur Sean Parker.
51.
In 2014, John Perry Barlow suffered the loss of Buck, his beloved Maine Coon cat that he believed to be a bodhisattva; the cat had many fans on social media.
52.
John Perry Barlow died in his sleep on the night of February 7,2018, at his San Francisco home, at the age of 70.