"You are as mighty as the flower
Feb. 8th, 2018 08:39 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
drwex...that will grow the stones away."
John Perry Barlow is dead, and our world is so much poorer. Is it strange to cry at news of the death of someone you've only met a couple times?
I knew of Barlow, of course. I was a Deadhead of sorts and he was famously their lyricist for 25 years, writing words to dozens of songs. Then one year I went to a conference on cyberspace and there he was, all shaggy hair and big hands and that neck scarf.
Yes, cyberspace. Hush, you, we did indeed used to have conferences on that. Maybe before we knew better, or before we lost our idealism, which Barlow never did. So a bunch of us hung out for a few days and debated things like liberty and transnationalism and at night a small handful of us started out in Barlow's room, smoked pot, and walked on a beach. We talked cattle ranching and about the sorry state of our nation. Barlow wasn't much for telling personal stories - he liked to talk about bigger things. The next year, he was back but more withdrawn, didn't stay for the whole thing. Found out later he was deep in the discussions that would lead to founding the EFF.
I keep waking up in worse worlds. I want to go to sleep and wake up in a better one, maybe one where Barlow is still alive. Wherever he is, it will be a better world, with people who believe they can make a difference, people filled with hope and the certainty that no problem created by people cannot be solved.
John Perry Barlow is dead, and our world is so much poorer. Is it strange to cry at news of the death of someone you've only met a couple times?
I knew it’s also true that a good way to invent the future is to predict it. So I predicted Utopia, hoping to give Liberty a running start before the laws of Moore and Metcalfe delivered up what Ed Snowden now correctly calls 'turn-key totalitarianism.'
-- Barlow, quoted in his obit posted by the EFF
I knew of Barlow, of course. I was a Deadhead of sorts and he was famously their lyricist for 25 years, writing words to dozens of songs. Then one year I went to a conference on cyberspace and there he was, all shaggy hair and big hands and that neck scarf.
Yes, cyberspace. Hush, you, we did indeed used to have conferences on that. Maybe before we knew better, or before we lost our idealism, which Barlow never did. So a bunch of us hung out for a few days and debated things like liberty and transnationalism and at night a small handful of us started out in Barlow's room, smoked pot, and walked on a beach. We talked cattle ranching and about the sorry state of our nation. Barlow wasn't much for telling personal stories - he liked to talk about bigger things. The next year, he was back but more withdrawn, didn't stay for the whole thing. Found out later he was deep in the discussions that would lead to founding the EFF.
I keep waking up in worse worlds. I want to go to sleep and wake up in a better one, maybe one where Barlow is still alive. Wherever he is, it will be a better world, with people who believe they can make a difference, people filled with hope and the certainty that no problem created by people cannot be solved.
no subject
Date: 2018-02-10 03:47 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-02-12 01:55 am (UTC)sorry, love
no subject
Date: 2018-02-20 07:22 pm (UTC)Not at all. I never got a chance to meet him, but I was still gutted. (I'm one of those people who remember where we were when we first read the Cyberspace Manifesto, and I still try to keep some of that idealism alive...)