About John Perry Barlow
John Perry Barlow (October 3, 1947 – February 7, 2018) was an American poet, essayist, cattle rancher, and cyberlibertarian political activist. He was also a lyricist for the Grateful Dead, a founding member of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Freedom of the Press Foundation, and an early fellow at Harvard University's Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society. == Early life and education == Barlow was born in Sublette County, Wyoming near the town of Cora, the only child of Norman Walker Barlow, a Republican state legislator, and his wife, Miriam Adeline Barlow (née Jenkins, later Bailey), who married in 1929. Barlow's paternal ancestors were Mormon pioneers. He grew up on Bar Cross Ranch in Cora, Wyoming, a 22,000-acre (8,900 ha) property his great-uncle founded in 1907, and attended elementary school in a one-room schoolhouse. He was raised as a devout member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and 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 from Wesleyan University's College of Letters. He served as Wesleyan's student body president until the administration "tossed him into a sanitarium" following a drug-induced attempted suicide attack in Boston, Massachusetts.
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