PositiveEFFThe newly-released memoir, Mother American Night: My Life in Crazy Times, follows Barlow, who passed away earlier this year, from his upbringing in Wyoming as \'ranching royalty,\' through to the experience of writing his first song for the Grateful Dead (Mexicali Blues), up to the phone calls with hackers in the Legion of Doom that led him to work with Mitch Kapor in creating the Electronic Frontier Foundation—and beyond ... Mother American Night reads like a history of the culture clashes of the last fifty years: offline versus online, rural versus urban, government versus private life. As a rancher who ended up co-founding EFF and the Freedom of the Press Foundation as well as working as Dick Cheney’s campaign coordinator, one of Barlow’s most impressive qualities was straddling, and bringing together, these sometimes opposing cultures ... a helpful reminder of just how quickly the online spaces that Barlow helped define thirty years ago have shifted, and can shift again—for the better, if we work for it—wherever we come from, and whatever our background.
