John Perry Barlow
John Perry Barlow
Name dropping
I met John Perry Barlow one October in Maine at a conference called PopTech.
I met several luminaries that weekend.
Perry Barlow, Chris Anderson, Bob Metcalf, and I think there might have been a man in attendance with the initials JE.
I actually had a glass of whiskey with Perry Barlow and Anderson on the last night of the event.
I was well drunk and feeling sassy and wanted to pick the brains of the big boys. . .but they were pretty much just looking to drink and get laid, and I was not one of the flock that they were wanting. . .
They did humor me and chat a bit, and I was able to impress them with how much I knew about Afghanistan and the Middle East in general.
On the event's first night, I sat across from Barlow at dinner. I had no idea who he was. He mentioned having a ranch in Montana, and I mentioned working on a ranch called Mount Sky.
He snuffed and said it was only a playground, a ranch for play.
I said, “Oh, I couldn’t agree more. It was filled with coastal intellectuals in cowboy costumes.”
A few of the people at the table gave each other looks, and Perry, sitting there with a ridiculous cowboy scarf tied around his neck and a bolo tie to boot, with cowboy boots. . .
He looked like an ass hat, and my little comment delivered with wide-eyed innocence certainly had gotten his attention.
He said. . . “Now, what is your name?” And I smiled and told him. . .
And he said, “Hm, Bourne, you say?”
“Yes,” I said, “Bourne is my name.”
“Any relation?” he asked. I said, “Just but distantly.”
He gave me a wink, and I winked back.
“Well, it seems we have some Irish royalty at the table,” he said.
I said, “Not certain about royalty, but certainly Irish.”
And that was the extent of our conversation that weekend, until that last evening when I sat my ass at the big boy's table and tried to talk shop with luminary intellectual men that were just looking to get drunk and laid or both at that point. . .and I was not what they had in mind for a drinking companion or a potential fuck.
But as said, they did humor me for around an hour and 1/2, and they did seem to think I had a few things to say, but it was not the evening of philosophical enlightenment that I had hoped for, with the big boys.
It was a strange event, one of the anomalies of the day, local and global intellectuals, those that were on the pulse of the start of this World Wide Web.
Looking back, I now realize these men were also involved with the WEF.
I was too politically naive back then to be aware of their broader networking. And as said, there might well have been a man with the initials JE there, but that old webpage has long since been edited.
Funny, that set, so about the open flow of information, yet they retroactively edit their websites.
