[Anonymous. Posted to the WELL, sometime in 1995.]

 The Compressed
 BARLOW-MATIC
 CyberSpewer
 A User's Guide to the Locutions of John Barlow.
 Save Time! Save Money! Be Cool! Be.......Barlow!

 Do you often find yourself faced with a raving Luddite who wouldn't
 know a keyboard from a kumquat? Do you often wish you has just
 le mot juste that would put him in his place?

 Of course you do.

 Now there's an easy way to quash Luddites without breaking out
 your brain!

 Just whip out one or more of these time-tested phrases that have been
 shown to win instant respect and admiration from Netters the world
 over. Not just freshly minted blather, but blather that has been carefully
 tuned to give you just the right cyber-spin in all situations.

 Find the phrase that pays!

 Dial up .........BARLOW-MATIC!

 1. To get their attention and set just the right historic note say:

 "We are in the middle of the most transforming technological
 event since the capture of fire."
 (Ignore invention of steam, telephone, atomic weapons,
 antibiotics....there weren't as big as fire and online.)

 2. Tell them there are no easy answers to simple questions:

 Slouka:"What direction are we going in?"
 Barlow: "I don't know."

 3. Have a profession that revolves around something no one
 can deny:

 "Let me tell you what I do for a living these days. I go around
 and tell people that something really weird is taking place."

 4.Work hard at your profession:

 "That is all I do."

 5.Put productive people in their place:

 "If you are making something you can touch, and doing well
 at it, then you are either an Asian or a machine."

 6: Let your listeners know you yearn for the simple life of
 loincloths, bad teeth and a 24 year life span:

 "There are times I honestly believe we would have been
 better off if we'd gone the way of the Aborigines."

 7. Always take a firm position on tough questions:

 "I'm pro-choice to the extent that choice is possible."

 8. Assert that the way back is forward:

 "I took faith in the idea that, on the other side of
 this info-desert we all seemed to be crossing,
 technology might restore what it was destroying."

 9. Name quaint spaces in a vague way:

 "Info-desert." [Presumably a space where there
 is no information, but maybe a space where there
 is too much information.]

 10. Sock 'em with a little poetry to induce  heavy
 breathing.

 "A word written in the sky by jet fighters is not
 the same as that word spoken by lovers."

 11. Take the long, high ground and show them
 how far your vision stretches. Remind them that
 they are short-sighted.

 "I'm beginning to realize that the principal difference
 between you and me, Mark, is that I take a considerably
 longer view of things."

 12. Titillate. Seduce. Move gently at first:

 "It is not mediated. It's as intimate as it possibly could be
 withou me whispering it in your ear."

 13. Then get cybersexy, but in a delicate way:

 "...to feel the greatest sense, to realize the most experience
 I want to completely interact with the consciousness
 that's trying to communicate with me. Rapidly."

 14. Penetrate the central concepts. Make it so real
 you could almost taste it:

 "We're moving away from information -- *through*
 information-- and back toward experience."

 15: Restate Darwin in a slightly off-beat fashion:

 "Evolution occurs a lot more rapidly  and better
 in open, unconstrained environments than in
 constrained environments."

 16. Show them cyberspace is just like real life:

 "There's a hell of a lot of babble in life, and there's a
 hell of a lot of babble in cyberspace."

 17. Note paralells with current  virus theories and
 automated office copiers:

 "What I wrote had self-reproduced."

 18. Ask questions that have only one correct answer:

 "Is there something wrong with experimenting?"

 19. When the going gets down to the details, rock
 them back on their heels with a massive generality:

 "Everything that is human on this planet is going to
 be profoundly transformed by this."

 20. Let Poland be Poland.

 "You can be just as conservative as you want to be."

 21. Cite the Sixties.

 "We are all basically old hippies."

 22. Assume the tie-dyed mantle of hip heroism:

 "I actually did go back to the land, unlike many old
 hippies."

 23. Oppose oppresive organisms:

 "Is there a way to dismantle these great creatures of
 corporate power?"

 24. Establish that you are not flakey:

 "I spent several years driving a four-horse team around,....

 25. But that you know Hegel from a Hummer:

 "...in very direct contact with the phenomenal world...."

 26. And have the common touch:

 "....and my neighbors."

 27: Be from the heartland:

 "...my little town in Wyoming, where I still live..."

 27. Be for all technostuff, except television:

 "I see what happened to that culture as soon as the
 satillite dishes bloomed in the backyards. And it has
 been devastating."

 28. Repeat your firm philosophical position:

 "Nobody I know is more pro-choice than I am....
 But I do try to adapt to that which I can't change."

 29. Say what the Net has:

 "The net might have some real potential there."

 30. Always close with a referrence to the other great
 philosopher of change:

 "And that really takes me back to Nietzche's statement
 about sin."

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