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EFF Founder John Perry Barlow Has Died At Age 70 (eff.org)
The Electronic Frontier Foundation reports that its founder, John Perry Barlow, has passed away quietly in his sleep this morning. He was 70 years old. From the report: 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."
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."
I support EFF proudly and donate regularly, and have for years. If you depend on the Internet for any part of your livelihood, I encourage you to do the same. It wasn't invented to be a surveilled shopping mall. It's supposed to be for you, individually, to use as you will. EFF helps you in this effort.
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A Little Light
Blown Away
We Can Run But We Can't HIde
Picasso Moon
I Will Take You Home
Gentlemen, Start Your Engines
Hell in a Bucket
Throwing Stones
My Brother Essau
Feel Like A Stranger
Lost Sailor
Saint of Circumstance
Easy to Love You
I Need a Miracle
Heaven Help the Fool
Estimated Prophet
Lazy Lightnin'
The Music Never Stopped
Finance Blues
Let It Grow (Weather Report II)
Black-Throated Wind
Walk in the Sunshine
Looks Like Rain
Cassidy
Mexicali Blues
Here's an old TAL segment about him meeting the love of his life (at the time):
https://www.thisamericanlife.o...