John Perry Barlow

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'I'm trying to understand cyberspace as a place,' he says. 'I want to discourage people from making simplistic assumptions about this place where we can't even take our bodies.' One assumption that particularly rankles him is that law as we know it can regulate the electronic commonwealth, and the EFF is working to reconceive issues like copyright and intellectual property rights in electron land. 'If there are no bodies,' he insists, 'then identity, locale, and law all turn into new things. After all, legal structures develop like geology, while technology goes along fast.'

But technology isn't the only thing that's changing at a gallop. 'I don't think government as we know it will exist in 50 years,' says Barlow. 'We'll have what I call `ad hocracies' to solve specific problems. Everywhere the rigid, top-down Prussian-army model is going to give way to the Italian-government model--disorder that works.'

The prospect of a benign chaos in the outer world, a lively and individualistic cyberworld, and greater and greater computer-aided communion among humans encourages Barlow in his peculiar form of political 'activism.' 'How do I further this process of transformation? I relax,' he deadpans. 'I go places and am calm. If you're heading somewhere where everything is new, the best tactic is to try to enjoy the ride.'

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