2000 Dead to the World March 6, 1996, 7:25pm PST KPFA - 94.1 FM, Berkeley CA John Perry Barlow with David Gans, host ------------------------------------------------- David Gans: The song you just heard is "Picasso Moon," written by Bob Weir and John Barlow, and performed by the Grateful Dead on May 5th, 1991 at Cal Expo. [. . .] But I have with me here in the studio the guy who wrote that last song, John Perry Barlow, who's looking at the corpse of his computer, whose battery has died. But John will be okay -- John Perry Barlow: No, actually, I'm not looking at the corpse of my computer at all -- DG: Oh, what are you doing now? JPB: I'm looking at this "Sensitive Language Report/Request Form." DG: Oh, no. [plaintive] Oh, no. JPB: It's not a *report* form, it's not a *request* form, it's a report slash -- DG: It's the form you fill out if you want to use a bad word on the air, to get *permission.* Or, if somebody on your program -- JPB: Has already done that. DG: -- utters a bad word, I have to fill that form out. JPB: Well, but how about -- DG: This does not bode well. JPB: -- how about -- one time, I did hear -- this goes back to something that is actually sort of related to this. A few years ago I was in China, talking to the woman who was the vice chairman of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, who was also the head of the academic computer networks in the People's Republic of China. And the reason I was there was to talk to her about the Internet. And, we had a big, fancy Chinese dinner, and I finally said, I would like to talk to you about the Internet. And she said, oh, I'm so relieved, I would like to talk to you about the Internet. And I said, well, I want to see the Internet enter China; how hard is that going to be? And she said, well, *very* hard, because your government won't *let* it enter China. They were afraid at that time that if the Internet entered China, that the Chinese would steal all of our nuclear secrets over it, and so they were not allowing it to enter. DG: Is that true? JPB: Yeah, that's true! The Department of Energy and, you know -- no, it's true, and so she was trying to get me to facilitate on *my* end the entry of the Internet into China, which I then did. But, in the meantime, I said, well now wait a second, aren't you the least bit concerned about giving every student in China a global printing press. And she said, well, *you* know it would do that and *I* know it would do that, but there are many people here who don't. DG: JPB: And I said, well, you're a highly placed party official, heh, isn't that going to be difficult for *you* if this comes down? And she said, I've always felt it's better to apologize than ask permission. But what we have *here* in the People's Republic of Berkeley is the Sensitive Language Report/Request Form, which actually *combines* asking permission and apologizing in one neat and incredibly ironic, uh, piece of paper -- DG: Well -- JPB: -- where you've got the report and the request, and the date of the reported incident, and the date of the intended broadcast on the same line, and then you come down a little bit and you say, "Describe language: give specific quotes and context or topics." Check mark. "Includes Carlin words; indicate how many times used." Oh, damn, I'm bad with forms! I just thought I had to put Xs in all these places. DG: No, it's the number of times you -- JPB: Oh, okay,well -- DG: -- *intend* to -- JPB: -- let's just, for the purposes of the discussion, include these *once.* DG: No, I don't think we should do that, because I'll probably get in big trouble if we do that. JPB: No, no, but you can't, look -- DG: No, I *can,* because I -- JPB: -- but David, you, how can you -- DG: -- I have the power, because I can stop you -- JPB: How? DG: -- I can turn off your microphone. JPB: Oh, you can turn off my microphone? DG: As Kafkaesque as it sounds, John, I think I would be required to play a piece of music and usher you out of the studio if you do that. JPB: Is that right? DG: I don't really wanna find out what happens if you do that. This is not -- JPB: You know, this, this -- DG: -- a battle I'm prepared to fight tonight. JPB: -- this really gets, this gets right down to the -- DG: Hey, yes it does. JPB: -- to the important question, which is whether or not people are willing to *be* free. Because I believe, honestly, that liberty resides in its exercise. Now, you know, these words are words that my *children* use. They don't use them in *my* presence, they don't use them in the presence of adults. These are words that *I* use. I don't use them in the presence of my children, even though I know my children use them when they're not in *my* presence. DG: Well -- JPB: Now, let's, I mean, how Japanese can we be about this stuff? DG: Well -- JPB: Well, let's move on for a moment. I mean, rather than endanger the license, or your ability to broadcast on this medium -- DG: Thank you. JPB: -- though I still think there is something incredibly unfair -- I mean, look, David, how quickly can you turn off the mic, if I say *fuck!* right now. DG: Well, you see, the point is that I don't have to turn it off before you say it, but since you said it -- JPB: Now you have to fill out a -- DG: That's correct. JPB: -- Sensitive Language -- DG: Yes, I do. JPB: -- Report and Request Form. DG: Yeah, and I'll probably be advised that I should never invite you to be guest on the program again. JPB: Well, that's fine. But, I mean -- DG: You did it. JPB: -- fortunately, I have other media in which I can express myself and -- DG: But *I* don't! JPB: -- and more eloquently than that. But then, you know, there are some, some *references* here -- DG: Okay, I'm -- JPB: -- "Includes references to sexual or excretory organs." And I wrote down, just you know, so that we'd be complete, both in asking permission and in filing the report, "colon, sphincter, testicle" -- DG: Yes, you can say those -- JPB: -- "bladder, urethra," and, you know, something that most people don't even know about, which is the vas deferens. The vas deferens is an amazing part of the sexual organic structure of your human being, it's a piece of tubing about 30 feet long, that lies between the testicle and, you know, uh, anything useful. DG: The little, it's, yes, well, never mind. Go ahead. JPB: Uh, now here's another check mark. "Includes descriptions of sexual or excretory activities or functions; specific language." And so I thought, "I went to the bathroom." "I went to the toilet." "I went to the water closet." "We made love." "The earth moved for us." -- DG: Uhh -- JPB: "I fucked her." DG: No, no -- JPB: *** DG: Well, as we were discussing here, it's my *own* damn fault, because I *showed* Mr. John Perry Barlow the *dang* form -- JPB: The *dang* form -- DG: -- so he *knew* that he was going to -- JPB: -- when he showed me this darn form -- DG: Gosh. JPB: -- I looked at this, and I said, "Gosh!" DG: Heck! JPB: I said, "This Buchanan!" DG: Really, don't say -- why don't you just blow it out your Exon, man! JPB: I just wanted to, I just wanted to stuff right up my Dole! DG: All right, all right, all right. *Now* we're gettin' somewhere. JPB: Ah -- DG: As *one* caller pointed out, there are more important issues than, quote, profanity, unquote. JPB: Yeah, but you know, this is Berkeley, 2000 California, which was the home, at a certain impressionable point in *my* youth, of something that called itself the "Filthy Speech Movement." DG: Oh, I remember that, too, and -- JPB: And, you know, that was used at the time to discredit the entire thing, but what it failed to recognize, well enough, is that if you get into a situation where there is no clearly definable difference between various kinds of media, between radio, television, tapes, books, speech, what goes on in the back of the bar, and that's where we are now, I mean, when we go into the Internet, all that can be produced within the human mind can also be devolved down into ones and zeros. DG Yes -- JPB: And it's a continuous medium, And there is no difference between that which is debasing and that which is angelic in terms of what kind of one and zero produces either. So we are now down to a situation where we can no longer draw these peculiar distinctions. I mean, a moment ago, after I had my sort of impetuous and probably adolescent fit of pique over the sensitive language report form, a caller called up and used many of the terms *on* this form, addressed to me, as *weapons,* to tell me what a, you know, what a *Buchanan* I had been -- DG: JPB: -- for endangering, you know, the institutional sanctity of this great medium. And, uh, I said, now wait a second, wait a second. What gives you the right to actually *call* me, shall we say, a Buchanan, when I can't say a word like that on the air, when I'm not using it as a weapon. And he said, because we care about KPFA. And, I guess I care about KPFA, but what I *really* care about is the ability of people to express what is inside of them regardless of what it is. DG: And insofar as this is any, this is another beachhead, another place to fight that battle, I can't completely disagree with you, as to the advisability of what you did. But as a programmer who stands to face severe, uh, heaviosity from the people here -- JPB: Well, but David, how can -- DG: Because the government -- JPB: -- how can you *possibly* have prevented me? DG: I *couldn't* have prevented you. I -- JPB: I mean, you know, in order for you to prevent me from doing what I just did, you would have had to engage in the provenly *unconstitutional* "prior restraint." DG: Yes. JPB: You would have had to*know* what I was likely to suddenly publish. And prevent me from doing so. DG: Which I was *unable* to do -- JPB: That's right. DG: -- *uninterested* in doing -- JPB: That's right -- DG: -- so *after* the fact, I have to put on a record and yell at you. JPB: -- so if the FCC wants to take *me* to task, for having said a word like -- DG: Gingrich. JOB: *Gingrich!* on the air, uh, then I suppose that is their right. DG: They wanna whack your little Reagan, you know. JPB: If they wanna whack my Reagan really hard -- DG: All right, all right, all right -- JPB: -- then, you know, that is their right, but I think it would be, you know, it would be *really* Clintoned up of them to do that to the radio station. DG: Now, for the uncomprehending listeners, the gentleman I'm talking with here, the name of the program is "Dead to the World," my name is David Gans, and my guest is John Perry Barlow, who is not *only* a fellow who has written songs with the Grateful Dead, but is also a founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an organization of which I am a member, and which is vitally interested in an issue that bears very heavily on what we're talking about here, because the Internet has just been brought into the same sort of regulation as this radio station, in an even more draconian and bizarre way, because the rational for regulating *broadcast* content does not apply to what happens in cyberspace, and yet, certain factions in this government are attempting to see to it that the same sort of restrictions -- in other words, to put it very bluntly, they want to restrict *all* public speech on the 'net to that which would be acceptable in a kindergarten classroom. JPB: Actually, what they want to do is -- there's a curious membrane between the culture of childhood and the culture of adulthood. And I have three young daughters, all of whom use, regularly, in their own company -- I mean, they're all under 13 years old, and they regularly use what is referred to in this report form that I've got here in front of me as the "Carlin words," in their own company. And I hear them, periodically, doing that sort of thing. And I was once their age, and I did that sort of thing, but I tried to do it where no adult would ever hear me. And I occasionally use these words myself, but I try to do it where no child will ever hear me. And we have a huge governmental regulatory structure that is trying to regulate the membrane between childhood and adulthood. And now that we have created something besides a broadcast medium, where everybody is now a multicaster and everybody is a multi-listener, we are trying to regulate this global social space, so as to maintain the membrane between childhood and adulthood, and what is permissible across that membrane, in a way that will conform to our cultural boundaries, in spite of the fact that there may be people on other parts of the planet that don't see things quite the way we do. DG: There are people on other parts of this *block* who don't see things this way. JPB: Well, yes, including that fellow who called me a Buchanan earlier. But, you know, I was in a debate last week with Arianna Huffington, William F. Buckley, and the appropriately named Cathy Cleaver of the Family Research Council -- DG: Oh, boy! JPB: -- who is a humorless person. DG: Buckley's like the liberal in *that* crew. JPB: Well, I was actually sort of expecting that he was gonna be on our side , but he wasn't. Because somebody had shown him the "blue book" of, you know, those kinds of materials that were available on the Internet. And it was the first time that he'd ever had to grapple with the totality of freedom of expression. You know, that everything that could be expressed by human beings could be expressed by human beings and there wouldn't be anything that could *stop* anybody. And he was not prepared for that, and I would say that most of the governmental and social structures of the world as we know it are not prepared for that. I mean, we are in the middle of the most profound event wrought by technology in the history of humankind, which is the creation of a space where people can express themselves and nobody can stop them. DG: Uh, that's a very, um -- that ain't gonna stop people from trying to stop them, is what I mean to say -- JPB: No, of course not, no -- DG: -- and what are we gonna do about that? JPB: -- in fact, in fact, what you see now going on in Congress, and in various parts of the world -- I mean, actually, the leading edge of this was not the Exon amendment, was not the computer decency act, it was when the Republic of Iran passed a death sentence on Salman Rushdie. That was the first time, that I know of, where some formal power on the planet Earth decided that somebody had violated their cultural principles so profoundly, that they were subject to a major extraterritorial penalty. And what we are now doing with the computer decency act is very much the same thing. I mean, it's only a $250,000 fine instead of the death penalty, but never mind, anybody on the planet Earth who says or expresses something which would be offensive to Cathy Cleaver, of the Family Research Council, is now subject to the weight of American governmental authority. DG: Let me ask you a question. Do you think people in o 17d0 ur audience should register and vote? JPB: Well, I mean, I suppose they should, but you know, their representative here in Berkeley voted for the computer -- DG: That would be Ronald V. Dellums. JPB: Yes, exactly, he voted -- he was one of the people who could have stopped this from happening. DG: It would have taken a few hundred of him to stop it, as I -- JPB: No, no, no, he was on the *committee.* DG: Ah, he was on the committee. JPB: He was, I mean -- DG: Feinstein went for it, too. JPB: *Feinstein* went for it. You know, I mean it was really kind of extraordinary. DG: Well, what, only four or five Senators voted against the damn thing. JPB: That's right. DG: But more than that, not just -- this little decency act thing is a small part of an *immense* -- JPB: No, it's -- DG: -- quote, reform, unquote, bill -- JPB: No, no, what it is, is part of the immune response of all of the systems that have organized themselves around industry over the last 300 years. You know, all those things -- DG: JPB: -- seriously, I mean -- DG: Yeah. JPB: -- the nation-state, the corporation, all of those things that were designed to turn human beings into machine parts. For a valid purpose -- I mean, it was what had to happen in order to create the next phase of human existence. But, uh, they are now fighting for their lives against historical forces that are inevitably going to sweep them away, rather rapidly, and they are going to be, uh -- people will die, as they did the *last* time one of these events took place. I mean, when industry swept agriculture, you had events like the American Civil War, where 70,000 people died in a single day. And *that* was what that war was about, as much as anything, was a war between an agrarian economy and an industrial economy. You're gonna have that happen again. And you're just seeing the leading edge. And, you know, we're at a relatively serene and blissful point in that struggle, when people can, you know, get as exercised as they did a little bit ago, when I say a certain word on a radio station in Berkeley, California, the home of the Filthy Speech Movement. DG: So what do you think we oughtta do? JPB: Well, I'm a strong believer in a fundamental principle, which is that liberty resides in its exercise. And I think that what we should do is *publicly* do that which resides within our own conscience to do. And we should *think* about our consciences, and *not* think about the law, and *not* think about authority, but think about ethics, and think about decency, in the pure sense of the word. Not decency as it might impose itself on human beings *through* the law. DG: Well, that's the funny thing, see, I think of myself as a pretty decent and ethical guy, and I don't live my life with an eye on what the law says, I live my life with an eye on what my morality says. JPB: I think most people feel that way, but you know, you put yourself in an institutional context, as you were earlier, when I was, you know, when I was storming your verbal barricades, with the Sensitive Language Report/Request Form -- DG: Not *mine,* man, not *my* verbal barricades. JPB: No, no, not "mine," but who -- what was the human being who was coming at *me* and trying to tell me that I couldn't do that sort of thing here? DG: Somebody who thinks that there are bigger battles than that one, and that this radio station -- JPB: This is how totalitarianism works. DG: Yeah, I know that, John, but -- JPB: David, this is -- DG: We get a lot of good information -- JPB: Listen, this is how it *works.* DG: -- a lot of progressive stuff comes through this radio station -- JPB: Well -- DG: -- every day, and by not using words that get them in trouble, and they are under *constant* -- JPB: It's too bad you didn't spend any time in a Communist country! DG: I wish I *had,* so I could sympathize with you completely, but -- JPB: -- I mean, 'cause it was just exactly like this. It was *precisely* like this. DG: I know, "we're building our own *ovens.*" I've heard this rap-- JPB: We are! DG: -- I know, John, I know, and I'm very, very sorry -- JPB: You know, I'll tell ya -- DG: -- to be *arguing* with you about, on a *music* program on KPFA! JPB: -- what's extraordinary to me -- I find myself in this happy position, of having no institutional authority whatsoever exercised in my immediate economic life. That is to say, I'm one of those people, and they are *very few* in this America country that we've got, who can say what he thinks. Out loud, without fear of economic reprisal. And ask yourself -- I mean, I don't -- "out there in the listening audience, if anybody is listening at this time" -- can you say what you really honestly believe without fear of economic or social reprisal. DG: Let me throw that question back in your face by saying, are you really willing to so cavalierly put at risk other people's livelihood? JPB: Well -- DG: As you did in this half hour here? JPB: Well, but see, I would say that *any* time that an institution sets itself up in such a fashion so that it claims prior restraint, on anybody whom *you* admit into its precincts, they're asking more than they humanly can of you. Really. DG: Well, I'm guessing I'll probably survive this -- JPB: Well, I should hope so. DG: -- episode, I *hope.* JPB: I mean, at least I didn't come in with a machine gun. DG: Yeah. Well, it's been illuminating. Let me take a break, play this cart, tell you that you're listening to KPFA in Berkeley or KFCF in Fresno, and "Dead to the World" will continue in a moment. *** . 0