John Perry Barlow

(1947 - 2018)

Born in Wyoming, John Perry Barlow dropped acid with Timothy Leary, wrote lyrics for the Grateful Dead, spent 1967’s Summer of Love in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury district, worked on Dick Cheney’s 1978 congressional campaign, and helped found the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Another founder of EFF called him “the uncrowned poet laureate of cyberspace.” Barlow’s New York Times obituary notes that he claimed to begin writing lyrics to attract women: “I thought it was a misuse of the holy gift of poetry. Then I realized, this is what poetry has always been for.”