John Perry Barlow
Timothy Leary
Edward Snowden
NSA
http:// stone.com/barlow/A_Cartload_of_Bones.pdf
I realized that just as each oppressed group before us, the psychedelic community needed a liberation movement too. I joined by ‘being out' about my use of entheogens from that day forward.
As one of the first software developers for the NeXT computer, I got a call one day in '91. "Hello, Andrew? This is John Barlow from NeXTWorld magazine and I want to interview you."
“John Perry Barlow?”, I queried. I could feel his delight at my recognition. It only grew when I reminded him of the SIGGraph story.
He interviewed me for the magazine, and the conversation wandered. Soon, I was providing sysadmin help to him for his NeXT computer, ‘icecube’. We were both hosting server 'nodes' for uucp - the precursor to the internet that ran sendmail, mine went by cyberpunk nickname, ‘droid’.
It was October 23rd 1992 at the Palace of Fine Arts when he and I first joined forces for a group liberation - The 3D Reality Ball.
We gathered our freaky friends from the burgeoning yet still underground rave scene, our cypher punk pals via John Gilmore's party list, Bobby Weir and buds, to mix it up with the NeXT community to launch stone.com's newest 3D modeling software.
By 1992, Steve Jobs had gotten his Q security clearance and sold a bunch of cubes to the NSA, and we had sold a boatload of software to some front company in Texas.
But since I was invited inside Fort Meade and got to enjoy that copper mesh covered building, I can tell you there are Deadheads in the strangest of places, if you look at it right.
What better way to karmically clean dark money than throw a psychedelic rave and invite the NSA?
The Palace of Fine Arts had been totally transformed. Two dozen projectors on pillars on opposite sides of the room were projecting ambient images that would subtly change over time. A shamanic didgeridoo collapsed the space time continuum, as 'Bob' wandered about offering LSD
or MMDA to party goers. Genesis and Psychic TV performed a trippy concert, and the Cosmic Egg was cracked wide open.
Barlow and I were determined to keep Steve’s original mystical spark burning and, other than my phone line getting tapped and being put under DEA investigation, it was a huge success.
In 1993, Barlow and I threw the next Stone Rave in conjunction with the NeXTWorld convention. This was a night Barlow memorialized with Ira Glass in a 1997 This American Life 'Conventions'. John Perry tells the true life story of love at first sight - that was the fateful day of meeting Dr. Cynthia Horner, who he was
madly in love with until her tragic early death an all-too- short year later.
What he didn't mention to Ira was our crazy party and the love nest captured in this photo.
The next year we had the last Stone Rave as NeXT was beginning to falter - dropping their hardware and trying to live off their software OpenStep, which by the way evolved into the iOS used on iPhones/iPads today.
But Barlow picked up the ball and during the latter nineties, threw many such wild and impromptu bashes with other friends. And other software companies started throwing these types of parties, realizing the guerrilla marketing gold of gifting good experiences.
'Bob' recently told me that people come up to him to this day exclaiming that those raves were the best parties they have ever been to.
Barlow's BFF since childhood Bobby Weir dropped in to the ICU today, between gearing up for the first weekend of the Grateful Dead Fare Thee Well tour and his daughter's recital. Yes, that's the loyalty Barlow commands.