Facebook is the suburbs not the global village

In a house lashed by a winter rainstorm, perched above Mill Valley, north of San Francisco, we found one of the most passionate voices about our digital culture. John Perry Barlow is best known as a lyricist for the Grateful Dead, the essential counterculture band whose passionate fans, the Deadheads, were eager early adopters of online communities like the Well (Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link).

Throughout our interview, the man who founded the Electronic Frontier Foundation kept harking back to his life in a small town in Wyoming, where he spent years as a cattle rancher.
Ever since, he told us, he'd been trying to find the same sense of small-town community in cyberspace. The Well, whose members met in "meatspace" as well as online, had been a great experience. He told how, at Well parties, the members of the community emerged blinking into the real world, and discovered the faces behind the words.
John Perry Barlow seemed disappointed by today's social networks, and in particular the one that has really taken the online experience to the masses. "Facebook is like television, the opposite of what I was looking for," he grumbled. "It's the suburbs, not the global village."
He was a little more enthusiastic about Twitter, which he is using to promote the cause of online freedom. During the Wikileaks saga, one tweet by @jpbarlow echoed across the battlefield:

"The first serious infowar is now engaged. The field of battle is WikiLeaks. You are the troops."

He remains, however, sceptical about the progress that has been made in building sustainable online communities. Although he does see one personal upside - "a guy gave me his parking space the other day," he laughs. "He said he liked my Tweets."

John Perry Barlow @'BBC'