> -----Original Message-----
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On
> Behalf Of Julia Thompson
...
> For those of us really bad with names, a little refresher on just who John
> Perry Barlow is might have been in order.
>
> For those who have this problem and haven't read the interview yet, he
> coined the term "cyberspace", he's served on the board of the Electronic
> Frontier Foundation and wrote some Grateful Dead songs, including
> "Estimated
> Prophet" and "Cassidy". (Just a reminder that he'd written "Estimated
> Prophet" would have got me to the interview sooner.)
And he's a cattle rancher from Wyoming. And consultant to the CIA
sometimes. He believes that the Internet is alive (seriously). Frequent
ingester of psychotropics. One of the funniest Barlow moments was when
Spalding Gray ("The Killing Fields" and other movies -- see "Swimming to
Cambodia"!) was doing his "sit-down comedy" in Cupertino and mentioned
something about Barlow. From the audience, someone shouted, "He's here!"
Spalding: "Barlow, are you here?" Next thing you know, Spalding has him up
on stage, talking about various things, including LSD. Spalding looks hard
at Barlow and says, "You're tripping right now, aren't you?" Barlow looks
at the audience and asks, "Any law enforcement here tonight?" Nobody says
anything. "As a matter of fact, I am!" And then mumbled something about
internal possession not being illegal.
Barlow is one of the more interesting characters I've had the privilege of
knowing over the years. My personal funniest moment was when I was talking
to him about the ideas that led to Opion Inc., and he suddenly exclaimed,
"That's it! That's the collective consciousness! That's how we'll build
it!" What made it really funny was that we were in a bar near Moscone
Center, where we'd come from NextWorld, but on the other side of Moscone,
the American Psychiatric Association was having its annual meeting. So the
bar was full of geeks and shrinks, all of whom gave Barlow odd looks. We
still talk about things like, "If the Internet were thinking on its own, how
could we tell?"
Nick
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