A Space Cowboy’s Curriculum

Ten things I know about John Perry Barlow:

1. John Perry Barlow died this past February at age seventy, but people have been trying to describe him for decades. Among the attempts: “Internet guru,” “the thinking man’s Forrest Gump,” and “an oracle of the unusual” (this last phrase from his dear friend Carolyn “Mountain Girl” Garcia, one of Ken Kesey’s original Merry Pranksters). His New York Times obituary described him as “a former cowpoke, Republican politician and lyricist for the Grateful Dead whose affinity for wide open spaces and free expression transformed him into a leading defender of an unfettered internet.” Barlow himself, on one of his business cards, presented his job title as “Peripheral Visionary,” which was typically waggish of him but too modest. His vision, as he grooved through cyberspace and “meatspace” (which is what he called real life), could be direct, just as it could be X-ray or cosmic.

2. The first time I hung out