---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: "Dave Farber" <[email protected]>
Date: Thu, Feb 8, 2018 at 5:08 AM +0530
Subject: [IP] John Perry Barlow, Internet Pioneer, 1947-2018 | Electronic
Frontier Foundation
To: "ip" <[email protected]>
John Perry Barlow, Internet Pioneer, 1947-2018 | Electronic Frontier
FoundationThere is so much to say about John. The many years at the EFF board
with him. The great memories. So much to remember.
Dave
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/02/john-perry-barlow-internet-pioneer-1947-2018
John Perry Barlow, Internet Pioneer, 1947-2018Cindy CohnFebruary 7, 2018
With a broken heart I have to announce that EFF's founder, visionary, and our
ongoing inspiration, John Perry Barlow, passed away quietly in his sleep this
morning. We will miss Barlow and his wisdom for decades to come, and he will
always be an integral part of EFF.
It is no exaggeration to say that major parts of the Internet we all know and
love today exist and thrive because of Barlow’s vision and leadership. He
always saw the Internet as a fundamental place of freedom, where voices long
silenced can find an audience and people can connect with others regardless of
physical distance.
Barlow was sometimes held up as a straw man for a kind of naive
techno-utopianism that believed that the Internet could solve all of humanity's
problems without causing any more. As someone who spent the past 27 years
working with him at EFF, I can say that nothing could be further from the
truth. Barlow knew that new technology could create and empower evil as much as
it could create and empower good. He made a conscious decision to focus on the
latter: "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’s lasting legacy is that he devoted his life to making the Internet into
“a world that all may enter without privilege or prejudice accorded by race,
economic power, military force, or station of birth . . . a world where anyone,
anywhere may express his or her beliefs, no matter how singular, without fear
of being coerced into silence or conformity.”
In the days and weeks to come, we will be talking and writing more about what a
extraordinary role Barlow played for the Internet and the world. And as always,
we will continue the work to fulfill his dream.
Archives
| Modify
Your Subscription | Unsubscribe Now
