What a Life he Led – Mourning John Perry Barlow, the Bard of the Internet – From the Greatful Dead to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)

When I first met John Perry Barlow, we became instant soulmates. While that sentence is true for me, it also applies to probably 10,000 other people. That was Barlow–whether you were a world-famous avatar of LSD, a stuffy CEO, or the Vice President of the United States, he would win you over with his affable demeanor, arresting observations, and a mordant take on the human condition.

He had a unique and compelling credential–"junior lyricist of the Grateful Dead" was the way he put it–and he wielded it like an all-access laminate to the concert hall of life. His rock and roll bona fides was only one strand of a web of myths he pulled out of his suede jacket like a well-rolled joint: cowboy, poet, romantic, family man, philosopher, and ultimately, the bard of the digital revolution. He was an influential voice and an intimate participant in the early days of Wired, a co-founder and spiritual inspiration for the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), and the guy who promoted cyberspace as deftly as Steve Jobs hyped Apple. By the time he was done, he was more famous for proselytizing the internet than he was for co-writing "Cassidy" and other Dead classics.

Steven Levy

https://www.wired.com/story/mourning-john-perry-barlow-the-bard-of-the-internet/