John Perry Barlow

John Perry Barlow (October 3, 1947 – February 7, 2018) was an American poet and essayist, a cattle rancher, and a cyberlibertarian political activist who had been associated with both the Democratic and Republican parties. He was also a lyricist for the Grateful Dead and a founding member of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Freedom of the Press Foundation. He was Fellow Emeritus at Harvard University's Berkman Center for Internet and Society, where he had maintained an affiliation since 1998. 2Early life and education Barlow was born near Cora, Wyoming, as the only child to Norman Walker Barlow (1905–1972), a Republican state legislator, and his wife, Miriam "Mim" Adeline Barlow Bailey (née Jenkins; 1905–1999), who married in 1929. Barlow's paternal ancestors were Mormon pioneers. He grew up on Bar Cross Ranch near Pinedale, Wyoming, a 22,000-acre (8,900 ha) property founded by his great uncle in 1907, and attended elementary school in a one-room schoolhouse. Raised as a "devout Mormon", he was prohibited from watching television until the sixth grade, when his parents allowed him to "absorb televangelists". Although Barlow's academic record was erratic throughout his secondary education, he "had his pick of top eastern universities... simply because he was from Wyoming, where few applications originated." In 1969, he graduated with high honors in comparative religion from Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut. He served as the University's student body president until the administration "tossed him into a sanitarium" following a drug-induced attempted suicide attack in Boston, Massachusett