Today is the 22nd anniversary of the publication of John Perry Barlow's .Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace on Feb 8 1996. A day that arguably might be recognized as Internet Independence Day. Sadly John Perry Barlow himself will only be with us to celebrate it in spirit , since, as you undoubtedly will have heard, his physical self expired yesterday morning. Although Barlow was known for his Wyoming roots, and his San Francisco escapades, he was very much a New Yorker, long residing at Mott and Grand in Little Italy. In 2008 we were able to take advantage of this proximity to have him, just 11 days before Obama's election, ruminate on the growing role of the Internet in politics.

Displaying the wit, charm, and humor for which he is justly loved, in the talk Barlow focused on Obama's savvy harnessing of nascent social media for both fundraising and organizing, but he also accurately foresaw the fake news, bubbles, etc that are current election hallmarks. Apart from that he defined several useful concepts: jamais vu - remembering things that never happened; macro myopia - the tendency to overestimate the influence of a technology on society in the short term, and underestimate it in the long term; and pronoid - a pathological condition where you think the universe is a conspiracy on your behalf. Watch the stream at 11am EST.

On October 27 2008 EFF co-founder John Perry Barlow

 

delivered the fourth lecture in Evan Korth’s Computers and Society Speaker Series. The topic – “The First Internet Election?” Barlow wrote about his inspiration for th

lecture:

Ten years ago when I was a fellow at the Institute of Politics at Harvard’s Kennedy School, I was on a panel with Senator Ted Kennedy and my tragically late sidekick John Kennedy, Jr. The focus of our discussion was determining when the Internet would likely have the pivotal role in shaping a presidential campaign that television had assumed in the 1960 election of their brother and father. Oddly, for a couple of guys who were deeply suspicious of Cyberspace, they both thought this would happen much sooner than I did, possibly as early as 2000. I said it would be a decade at least. It has now been a decade. And this, with any luck at all, will now be that election.

At 11am EST (14:00 UTC) today February 8 2018 the video of this talk will be streamed on the Internet Society Livestream Channel (with open captions). The Computers and Society Speaker Series speaker series was sponsored by the Internet Society – NY Chapter, Free Culture @ NYU, Women in Computing (WinC), and the Association for Computing Machinery NYU Chapter.

View on Livestream: https://livestream.com/internetsociety/barlow/
Facebook simulcast: https://www.facebook.com/isocny/

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