John Perry Barlow

John Perry Barlow lived at least three lives. First: Wyoming cattle rancher, fifth-generation on the family spread, running the Bar Cross Land & Livestock Company. Second: lyricist for the Grateful Dead, writing words for Bob Weir that millions sang along to — “Cassidy,” “Estimated Prophet,” “Looks Like Rain.” Third, and the one that stuck: digital freedom fighter. In 1996, from Davos, he published “A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace,” a 900-word manifesto that told governments to keep their hands off the internet. “You have no moral right to rule us, nor do you possess any methods of enforcement we have true reason to fear.” He co-founded the Electronic Frontier Foundation to back it up. Barlow saw the internet as humanity’s best shot at a free society and spent decades fighting to keep it that way. Rancher, poet, revolutionary — the kind of American original they don’t make anymore.