{"id":126752,"date":"2018-06-21T13:00:18","date_gmt":"2018-06-21T17:00:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=126752"},"modified":"2018-06-21T14:54:49","modified_gmt":"2018-06-21T18:54:49","slug":"a-space-cowboys-curriculum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/06\/21\/a-space-cowboys-curriculum\/","title":{"rendered":"A Space Cowboy\u2019s Curriculum"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Ten things I know about John Perry Barlow:<\/p>\n

<\/u>1. John Perry Barlow died this past February at age seventy, but people have been trying to describe him for decades. Among the attempts: \u201cInternet guru,\u201d \u201cthe thinking man\u2019s Forrest Gump,\u201d and \u201can oracle of the unusual\u201d (this last phrase from his dear friend Carolyn \u201cMountain Girl\u201d Garcia, one of Ken Kesey\u2019s original Merry Pranksters). His New York Times<\/em> obituary described him as \u201ca 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.\u201d Barlow himself, on one of his business cards, presented his job title as \u201cPeripheral Visionary,\u201d which was typically waggish of him but too modest. His vision, as he grooved through cyberspace and \u201cmeatspace\u201d (which is what he called real life), could be direct, just as it could be X-ray or cosmic.<\/p>\n

2. The first time I hung out with my friend Barlow, the year was 2008, and he was cavorting around a party in Manhattan, cackling like a bedlamite as he shot colored lasers from the knuckles of the high-tech black leather gloves he wore. Witnessing this, I thought of the chorus to a song he\u2019d written, a chorus I already knew by heart: \u201cI may be going to hell in a bucket \/ But at least I\u2019m enjoying the ride.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

3. Barlow,\u00a0the only child of a devout Mormon state senator, started out on a Wyoming ranch. But then the sixties happened, along with a degree in comparative religion from Wesleyan and a gig writing witty, poetic song lyrics for the Grateful Dead. (The Dead\u2019s guitarist Bob Weir was Barlow\u2019s friend from adolescence.)\u00a0 Adventures ensued, of course\u2014but not just adventures. By the seventies, Barlow\u2019s life goals had become \u201cbeing a good ancestor\u201d; remembering that \u201cit\u2019s not either\/or, it\u2019s both\/and\u201d; and practicing \u201cpronoia,\u201d which he defined as \u201cthe suspicion the universe is a conspiracy on your behalf.\u201d<\/p>\n

When he reached thirty in the late eighties, he wrote out for himself his two dozen principles of adult behavior. Some of these principles are quite practical: \u201cAssign responsibility, not blame.\u201d\u00a0\u201cNever assume the motives of others are, to them, less noble than yours are to you.\u201d\u00a0\u201cAvoid the pursuit of happiness. Seek to define your mission, and pursue that.\u201d But others are less earthy, more in sync with the man\u2019s Grateful Dead work: \u201cExpand your sense of the possible.\u201d\u00a0\u201cLaugh at yourself frequently.\u201d\u00a0\u201cBecome less suspicious of joy.\u201d<\/p>\n

4. Barlow could pen some seriously flavorful prose. He unleashed it in essays for Wired<\/em>, diatribes in the New York Times<\/em>, Facebook posts, and group emails. I often begged Barlow to write an autobiography, and as with so much else, my friend got in right under the wire. As he lay dying, he dictated a memoir to the author Robert Greenfield.\u00a0Mother American Night<\/em> was published earlier this month.<\/p>\n

5. When Barlow wasn\u2019t raising cattle, raising consciousness, or raising hell, he worked as an activist. And in no sphere were his patriotic efforts more farsighted, bold, and effective than in his advocacy for net neutrality, long before that term even existed. Back when cyberspace was still being born (Barlow had borrowed cyberspace<\/em> from the novelist William Gibson and assigned it to the online realm), he recognized that \u201cinformation is power if you can share it, validate it, vet it, and contribute it to that global awareness that we are all in the process here of creating. For the first time in human history, we are on the verge of being able to convey a right to everybody on this planet \u2026 the right to know.\u201d<\/p>\n

Barlow cofounded the Electronic Frontier Foundation along with two able comrades, John Gilmore and Mitch Kapor. He also started the Freedom of the Press Foundation and set down, in 1996, his seminal \u201cA\u00a0Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace.\u201d Written as a reaction to that year\u2019s Communications Decency Act, which Barlow perceived as an affront and threat to the Internet\u2019s free flow of thought, the \u201cDeclaration\u201d begins, \u201cGovernments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone.\u00a0 You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather.”<\/p>\n

6. Another of Barlow\u2019s principles was to \u201clive memorably.\u201d As the reader will have gleaned by now, Barlow did. In one email to friends, he boasted that, among his other accomplishments, he\u2019d<\/p>\n

discussed automobile mechanics with a holy man on a mountain top in India \u2026 made a dead-stick forced landing on a private airstrip \u2026 been in weather so cold my eyes froze shut (and, while blind, had to ask a real Wyoming cowboy to lick them open) \u2026 been shot at and missed by a Russian poet\/gangster while protecting one of the last living Romanovs \u2026 played the lover of Lady Ada Lovelace and received thereby a smokin\u2019 kiss from Tilda Swinton \u2026 talked Tim Leary out of having his head cut off and frozen \u2026 encountered Richard Nixon 3 times when one wouldn\u2019t have expected him \u2026 dropped names so heavily that it was more like strafing \u2026 made shit up when the truth was more interesting (but far less plausible) \u2026 destroyed countless enemies by turning them into friends \u2026 and on occasion \u2026 bragged even more shamelessly than I am here.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

7. Like Barlow, I\u2019m an only child, and in one of our best talks together, we discussed this condition. I realized that he trumped me, though, when he mentioned he\u2019d had a sibling: a twin who\u2019d died at birth. I thought of this at his memorial, which was held on April 8 in San Francisco\u2019s Fillmore Auditorium. At this so-called \u201cgraduation from meatspace,\u201d friends and family told stories about the man while Edward Snowden (broadcast live from Russia) spoke of Barlow\u2019s political importance and the house band (which featured Bob Weir, Jerry Harrison of Talking Heads, Sean Lennon, Harper Simon, and Lukas Nelson) played Barlow\u2019s greatest hits. In one room stood an altar devoted to Barlow, and displayed on it were those laser-shooting black gloves he\u2019d worn the first night I met him.<\/p>\n

His friend \u201cMountain Girl\u201d Garcia jokingly recalled how Barlow\u2019s three\u00a0A.M.<\/small> need-to-spiel phone calls were delightful but \u201ccaused trouble\u201d in her marriage. She attributed Barlow\u2019s thousands of friendships to his \u201cdeep need\u201d to make essential human connections. This need, she suggested, originated with his solitary childhood in the rural West: \u201cHe told me that on that remote ranch there really wasn\u2019t anybody for him to play with.\u201d Recalling that twin he\u2019d known in the womb yet lost forever, I thought about how that deep need for human connections might\u2019ve started even earlier<\/em> than childhood.<\/p>\n

8. Barlow was an alpha-male rogue, and he pissed me off once or twice. I\u2019ve heard he pissed off other people too. When he got irascible or too self-focused, he could definitely leave wreckage in his wake. But given how charming he was, nearly everyone forgave him for it. (Note the \u201cnearly.\u201d) I certainly did.<\/p>\n

9. Even in his illness-wracked last years, Barlow stayed positive, telling one of his daughters, \u201cI feel terrible\u2014but I\u2019m doing great.\u201d He stayed active, too, working ardently on an innovative clean-energy project that he\u2019d developed with a chemist. The final time I saw him was when a mutual friend and I visited him in a San Francisco hospital. Halfway through uttering one of his characteristically labyrinthine sentences, Barlow fell asleep. \u201cMaybe we should leave?\u201d I said to our friend. \u201cNot yet,\u201d she told me, knowing him better than I did. \u201cHe\u2019ll wake up soon.\u201d Sure enough, he did\u2014and resumed speaking from exactly<\/em> the point in the sentence where he\u2019d left off.<\/p>\n

10. Now that the FCC has rolled back the Obama-era net neutrality rules, the Internet\u2019s openness and fairness\u2014those very qualities that Barlow prized\u2014are threatened as never before. Like so many of us, Barlow would no doubt be disgusted at our currently configured FCC\u2014and the integrity-starved executive branch to which that FCC belongs. But I don\u2019t believe Barlow would feel hopeless. After all, he once said that \u201cgroundless hope, like unconditional love, is the only kind worth having.\u201d And in his memoir, he tells this piquant story: While driving around Utah one night in the eighties, he picked up a hitchhiker, a troubled homeless man, with whom Barlow, characteristically, launched into a theological discussion. \u201cI said, \u2018So you have a very personal God?\u2019 And he said,\u2018’Yup.\u2019 And I said, \u2018If you\u2019ll pardon me, the personal God you\u2019re serving \u2026 seems to be treating you like shit. Whereas I\u2019m doing okay and I don\u2019t have one.\u2019 And he said, \u2018You know, every soul comes into the world to take a curriculum. Some of us are taking Basket Weaving 101 and some of us are taking Astrophysics 406, and I\u2019m pleased to be taking the harder courses.\u2019\u2009\u201d<\/p>\n

Nationally speaking\u2014hell, globally<\/em> speaking\u2014we now find ourselves faced with one maddeningly difficult \u201ccurriculum.\u201d Perhaps the best way forward is the John Perry Barlow way: to learn as many lessons as possible while remembering that although we may indeed be going to hell in a bucket, it\u2019s still possible\u2014and sanity restoring\u2014to try to enjoy the ride.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Gary Lippman is a lapsed lawyer and former <\/em>Fodor\u2019s travel writer. His play\u00a0<\/em>Paradox Lust\u00a0appeared Off-Broadway, his\u00a0fiction has appeared in\u00a0<\/em>Open City, and his heart is in the Highlands.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  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: \u201cInternet guru,\u201d \u201cthe thinking man\u2019s Forrest Gump,\u201d and \u201can oracle of the unusual\u201d (this last phrase from his dear friend Carolyn \u201cMountain […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":334,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[34452,34456,34454,34453,34449,34455,34450,5571,9931,34451],"class_list":["post-126752","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-in-memoriam","tag-declaration-of-the-independence-of-cyberspace","tag-electronic-frontier-foundation","tag-federal-communication-commission","tag-graduation-from-meatspace","tag-john-perry-barlow","tag-net-neutrality","tag-principles-of-adult-behavior","tag-the-dead","tag-the-grateful-dead","tag-wesleyan"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nA Space Cowboy\u2019s Curriculum<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Ten things I know about John Perry Barlow, who fought for net neutrality long before the term was invented.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/06\/21\/a-space-cowboys-curriculum\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"A Space Cowboy\u2019s Curriculum by Gary Lippman\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"June 21, 2018 \u2013   Ten things I know about John Perry Barlow: 1. 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