But groundless hope, like unconditional love, is the only kind worth having.
Barlow, John Perry.
But generally speaking, I felt to engage in the political process was to sully oneself to such a degree that whatever came out wasn't worth the trouble put in.
Barlow, John Perry.
I don't know that I believe in the supernatural, but I do believe in miracles, and our time together was filled with the events of magical unlikelihood.
Barlow, John Perry.
I mean I look forward to the day when I can be Republican again.
Barlow, John Perry.
That is, when the primary articles of commerce in a society look so much like speech as to be indistinguishable from it, and when the traditional methods of protecting their ownership have become ineffectual, attempting to fix the problem with broader and more vigorous enforcement will inevitably threaten freedom of speech.The greatest constraint on your future liberties may come not from government but from corporate legal departments laboring to protect by force what can no longer be protected by practical efficiency or general social consent."
Barlow, John Perry. "The Economy of Ideas: Selling Wine Without Bottles on the Global Net." in: John Perry Barlow Homepage (EFF).
The riddle is this: if our property can be infinitely reproduced and instantaneously distributed all over the planet without cost, without our knowledge, without its even leaving our possession, how can we protect it? How are we going to get paid for the work we do with our minds? And, if we can't get paid, what will assure the continued creation and distribution of such work?
Barlow, John Perry. "The Economy of Ideas: Selling Wine Without Bottles on the Global Net." in: John Perry Barlow Homepage (EFF).
Digital technology is detaching information from the physical plane, where property law of all sorts has always found definition.
Barlow, John Perry. "The Economy of Ideas: Selling Wine Without Bottles on the Global Net." in: John Perry Barlow Homepage (EFF).
Throughout the history of copyrights and patents, the proprietary assertions of thinkers have been focused not on their ideas but on the expression of those ideas. The ideas themselves, as well as facts about the phenomena of the world, were considered to be the collective property of humanity. One could claim franchise, in the case of copyright, on the precise turn of phrase used to convey a particular idea or the order in which facts were presented.
Barlow, John Perry. "The Economy of Ideas: Selling Wine Without Bottles on the Global Net." in: John Perry Barlow Homepage (EFF).
Even the physical/digital bottles to which we've become accustomed, floppy disks, CD-ROM's, and other discrete, shrink-wrappable bit-packages, will disappear as all computers jack in to the global Net.
Barlow, John Perry. "The Economy of Ideas: Selling Wine Without Bottles on the Global Net." in: John Perry Barlow Homepage (EFF).
It turns out you can do a hell of a lot simply by changing the way you eat and exercise. They are feeding me drugs, and drug-like foods, and food-like drugs, and hypervitamins. So now I'm not smoking, not drinking, going to the gym, not eating refined carbohydrates. I'm much happier about the sight of leafy green vegetables than I used to be.
Barlow, John Perry and Brian Doherty (Interviewer). "John Perry Barlow 2.0." in: Reason Magazine Online. August/September 2004.
I'm still strongly opposed to antismoking laws, strongly opposed to any law that regulates personal behavior.
Barlow, John Perry and Brian Doherty (Interviewer). "John Perry Barlow 2.0." in: Reason Magazine Online. August/September 2004.
Every existing power relation is up for renewal with cyberspace, and it was only natural there would be an awful lot of fracas where cyberspace met the physical world. EFF has been the primary mediator on that border. We have been very successful at protecting against excessive government encroachment into the virtual world.
Barlow, John Perry and Brian Doherty (Interviewer). "John Perry Barlow 2.0." in: Reason Magazine Online. August/September 2004.
I personally think intellectual property is an oxymoron. Physical objects have a completely different natural economy than intellectual goods. It's a tricky thing to try to own something that remains in your possession even after you give it to many others.
Barlow, John Perry and Brian Doherty (Interviewer). "John Perry Barlow 2.0." in: Reason Magazine Online. August/September 2004.
After a decade of both fighting with and consulting to the intelligence community, I've concluded that the American intelligence system is broken beyond repair, self-protective beyond reform, and permanently fixated on a world that no longer exists.
Barlow, John Perry. "Why Spy?" in: Forbes. October 7, 2002.
A few weeks later, in early 1993, I passed through the gates of the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, and entered a chilled silence, a zone of paralytic paranoia and obsessive secrecy, and a technological time capsule straight out of the early '60s. The Cold War was officially over, but it seemed the news had yet to penetrate where I now found myself.
Barlow, John Perry. "Why Spy?" in: Forbes. October 7, 2002.
This dogma of secrecy is probably the most persistently damaging fallout from "the Soviet factor" at the CIA and elsewhere in the intelligence "community." Our spooks stared so long at what Churchill called "a mystery surrounded by a riddle wrapped in an enigma," they became one themselves. They continue to be one...
Barlow, John Perry. "Why Spy?" in: Forbes. October 7, 2002.
Here's what I believe. I believe that extolling the pursuit of happiness was a toxic stupidity entirely unworthy of my greatest American hero, Thomas Jefferson. Indeed, it is a poison that sickens our culture more wretchedly every nanosecond. I wish he'd never said it.
Barlow, John Perry. "The Pursuit of Emptyness." in: Forbes. 2000.
Yet even as happiness became our American due, the inner sense that we deserve to be happy seems to have generally withered. Kant spoke of "making ourselves worthy of happiness." It seems to me a rare American who behaves as if he has done so.
Barlow, John Perry. "The Pursuit of Emptyness." in: Forbes. 2000.
And when I'm happy, why am I happy? Never because I pursued it. Rather because I let it pursue me. To me, it seems that the more you ignore it, the more it will come looking. Swami Satchidananda put it better: 'If you run after things, nothing will come to you. Let things run after you. The sea never sends an invitation to the rivers. That's why they run to the sea. The sea is content. It doesn't want anything. That's the secret in life.'
Barlow, John Perry. "The Pursuit of Emptyness." in: Forbes. 2000.
African happiness is a joint enterprise, something that can only be created by the whole. I am happy because we are happy. Much contentment arises from a sense of family, community, and connectedness.
Barlow, John Perry. "The Pursuit of Emptyness." in: Forbes. 2000.
Long awaited by some and a nasty surprise to others, the conflict between the industrial age and the virtual age is now being fought in earnest, thanks to that modestly conceived but paradigm-shattering thing called Napster.
Barlow, John Perry. "The Next Economy of Ideas - After the copyright revolution." in: Wired. No. 10, 2000.
What's happening with global, peer-to-peer networking is not altogether different from what happened when the American colonists realized they were poorly served by the British Crown: The colonists were obliged to cast off that power and develop an economy better suited to their new environment.
Barlow, John Perry. "The Next Economy of Ideas - After the copyright revolution." in: Wired. No. 10, 2000.
No law can be successfully imposed on a huge population that does not morally support it and possesses easy means for its invisible evasion.
Barlow, John Perry. "The Next Economy of Ideas - After the copyright revolution." in: Wired. No. 10, 2000.
Practically every traditional pundit who's commented on the Napster case has, at some point, furrowed a telegenic brow and asked, "Is the genie out of the bottle?" A better question would be, "Is there a bottle?" No, there isn't.
Barlow, John Perry. "The Next Economy of Ideas - After the copyright revolution." in: Wired. No. 10, 2000.
Of course, it's one thing to win a revolution, and quite another to govern its consequences. How, in the absence of laws that turn thoughts into things, will we be assured payment for the work we do with our minds? Must the creatively talented start looking for day jobs?
Barlow, John Perry. "The Next Economy of Ideas - After the copyright revolution." in: Wired. No. 10, 2000.
Doctors, architects, executives, consultants, receptionists, televangelists, and lawyers all manage to survive economically without "owning" their cognition.
Barlow, John Perry. "The Next Economy of Ideas - After the copyright revolution." in: Wired. No. 10, 2000.
I'm finally ready to declare myself. I am a ladies' man. A womanizer. A libertine. A rake. A rogue. A roué. A goddamn running loose dog. I'd admit to being a lecher, but that word implies a solipsistic predation that I hope never applies to any of my relations with the mysterious sex. This is about something more sacred than anything a drooling wanker could appreciate.
Barlow, John Perry. "A Ladies Man." in: Nerve. December 10, 2001.
This is about worship. From the time the testosterone kicked in, I have knelt at the altar of that which is female in this world. I love women. What I love in them is something that moves and must be free to do so. I love their smells, their texture, their complexities, the inexhaustible variety of their psychic weather patterns. I love to flirt with them, dance with them, and to discourse with them endlessly on the differences between men and women. I love to make love.
Barlow, John Perry. "A Ladies Man." in: Nerve. December 10, 2001.
The sexual fires have always burned bright in my brainstem. Priapically preoccupied, I've written poetry by the ream, stormed police lines, ridden broncs, thrown punches and generally embarrassed myself on countless occasions. (Actually, I suspect that history consists largely of foolish things men have done to show off for women.)
Barlow, John Perry. "A Ladies Man." in: Nerve. December 10, 2001.
Most of these relationships are not actively sexual. Some were at one time. More never will be. But most of them feel as if they could become so. I love the feel of that tension, the delicious gravity of possibilities.
Barlow, John Perry. "A Ladies Man." in: Nerve. December 10, 2001.
The New, the fresh and unknown expanses of the emotional frontier, hold a fascination for me that I wish they did not. This breeds superficiality and the appearance of a hunger for conquest. But, unfortunately, I love the voltage, the charged gap between two people that can draw across itself such huge flows of information from so many parts of us. I love the feel of human bandwidth -- intercourse on all channels -- and there is so much more to exchange when nothing is yet known.
Barlow, John Perry. "A Ladies Man." in: Nerve. December 10, 2001.
And now, late in my forties, I doubt I'll ever be monogamous again. For reasons I'll explain, I feel strangely exiled into a condition of emotional wandering. I think my heart will travel widely. I want to know as many more women as time and their indulgence will permit me.
Barlow, John Perry. "A Ladies Man." in: Nerve. December 10, 2001.
Even so, I also want to go on loving the women I love now -- and I do love them -- for the rest of my life. These are relationships that have already lasted much longer than most marriages, even though some of them had to endure the hiatus of my own previous monogamies, one imposed by society, the other by what felt like an act of God.
Barlow, John Perry. "A Ladies Man." in: Nerve. December 10, 2001.
The most important consequence of losing Cynthia is that I now believe in the human soul. I had to see it and, once seen, it became obvious to me. No longer did I dismiss it as a biological artifact, a kind of software that arises in the electrochemical sputterings of the squishyware and cannot run otherwise. Rather I can feel the soul as an independent though immaterial identity that wears bodies like a costume.
Barlow, John Perry. "A Ladies Man." in: Nerve. December 10, 2001.
That was the interesting question alright, and Cynthia, in both the way she inhabited her body and the way she remained after leaving it, answered it for me. There is indeed a hand that moves the hand, there is a kiss that lives inside both sets of lips. At that point I decided that, whatever the pressures of society or the propensity of most women to insist on it, I wouldn't attempt monogamy again unless and until I encountered someone who induced it in me as naturally as she did. And I like to believe that nothing would make me happier than to have that happen. To fall in love. To be singularly devoted again.
Barlow, John Perry. "A Ladies Man." in: Nerve. December 10, 2001.
And scrupulous honesty, though it requires courage on both sides, is a lot more practical than most men believe it to be. The fact that I don't lie to her about these other encounters brings us closer rather than separating us.
Barlow, John Perry. "A Ladies Man." in: Nerve. December 10, 2001.
Indeed, lunatic candor seems to be my primary product these days. Like Hunter S. Thompson, the badder I get, the better I get paid.
Barlow, John Perry. "A Ladies Man." in: Nerve. December 10, 2001.
A bad reputation can set you free. After all, if you've already declared yourself to be a pot-smoking, acid-addled slut, your opponents are forced to oppose your ideas on their merits, rather than strategically revealing your hidden depravities. Shame is no weapon against the shameless.
Barlow, John Perry. "A Ladies Man." in: Nerve. December 10, 2001.
My conscience is clear, a fact that is not simply due to poor memory or an unwillingness to examine it carefully.
Barlow, John Perry. "A Ladies Man." in: Nerve. December 10, 2001.
I don't think of beauty as being something that is part of a woman, but rather something like a mist that gathers around her that becomes more beautiful if illuminated brightly from within. The real beauty, the part that lasts, is in the soul and not the skin.
Barlow, John Perry. "A Ladies Man." in: Nerve. December 10, 2001.
My inner lesbian is a wonderful accomplice, since she knows a lot about what turns women on, is more attuned to sensuality than the old in-out, and believes strongly that the journey is the reward.
Barlow, John Perry. "A Ladies Man." in: Nerve. December 10, 2001.
And creating that larger organism, making the Other into the Self, merging the Self into the Other is, after all, what sex is ultimately about. And of course, the point is not to have a self at all. To be Everything.
Barlow, John Perry. "A Ladies Man." in: Nerve. December 10, 2001.
In other words, to love a lot of women, you have to love them, without a trace of bullshit, one woman at a time. You have to bring each of them with you into the perfectly present, creating there a private zone of space and time that can be filled with that particular love. You won't have any of the comforting (though generally broken) social conventions to assure you that your vulnerability is safe. There are no assurances at all except for those that come directly from the feeling of connection you can make together. You are, in effect, beating back the darkness with the light you generate yourselves.
Barlow, John Perry. "A Ladies Man." in: Nerve. December 10, 2001.
When I judge myself, there is one question I ask: Would I want my daughters to encounter a man like me? And because I want them to be brave in their love, because I want their faith to be annealed by experience on the edge, I hope they find a few of my kind. But I hope they don't bring too many of us home.
Barlow, John Perry. "A Ladies Man." in: Nerve. December 10, 2001.
That doubtless sounds like a pretty disruptive statement itself, but it's not unconsidered. It seems to me that the combination of distributed digital technology and robust encryption has brought informatized society to a very sharp balance point between two lousy choices.
Barlow John, Perry. "A Pretty Bad Problem." in: Phil Zimmerman. PGP User's Guide. 1999.
At present most of us unwittingly leave a highly visible and nearly indelible trail in Cyberspace. Every time we make a modern financial transaction, use the telephone, send an e-mail message, we leave a path of bits from which anyone who's interested and properly equipped can assemble the detailed informational ghosts of our naked selves. If you have something you'd rather hide, don't hide it there.
Barlow John, Perry. "A Pretty Bad Problem." in: Phil Zimmerman. PGP User's Guide. 1999.
In the end, it doesn't matter much what they think or I think. The genie of guerrilla cryptography is out of the bottle. No one, not even its maker, can stuff it back in or keep it within what America laughably calls its borders. The genie is all over the Net. It's in your hands as you hold this book. Summon it with a conscience. But be prepared to summon it if you must.
Barlow John, Perry. "A Pretty Bad Problem." in: Phil Zimmerman. PGP User's Guide. 1999.
Source: European Graduate School (EGS)
