Internet pioneer, songwriter John Perry Barlow dies at 70
John Perry Barlow, an internet activist and lyricist for the Grateful Dead, has died.
The digital-rights group Electronic Frontier Foundation said Barlow died early Wednesday in his sleep at home in San Francisco. He was 70.
The cause of death was not immediately known. Barlow had been battling a variety of debilitating illnesses since 2015, according to supporters who organized a benefit concert for him in October 2016.
Barlow co-founded the EFF in 1990 to champion free expression and privacy online. In a 1996 manifesto, the “Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace,” he argued the U.S. and other governments shouldn’t impose their sovereignty on the “global social space we are building.”
“He’s one of the very first people who recognized the internet was going to be important because it would help people connect in a way they couldn’t in the physical world,” said Cindy Cohn, the EFF’s executive director.
Some of his policy views evolved over time, but he
remained optimistic about the power of the internet to strengthen human connections as long as people weren’t silenced by meddling governments or monopolistic businesses.
“He stayed consistent to this core idea that we could make something beautiful, or something awful, and it was up to us,” Cohn said.
Barlow was born in rural Sublette County, Wyo., in 1947 and raised near Pinedale, where his parents were ranchers and his father a state senator.
Barlow has said he grew up
as a devout Mormon before leaping into the counterculture of the 1960s. He befriended Bob Weir, one of the Grateful Dead’s founding members, when they were boarding school classmates at the Fountain Valley School in Colorado. Barlow graduated from Wesleyan University in 1969.
Barlow was famous among fans of the Grateful Dead. He co-wrote several songs with Weir, including “Mexicali Blues,” “Black Throated Wind” and “Cassidy.” He also wrote songs for String Cheese Incident and Burning Spear.