What I remember Barlow for is the https://www.eff.org/cyberspace-independence , but it's clear that he did much more work than what was visible to the general internet citizen.
> Barlow has been recently vilified as a naif who failed to foresee the power of the internet to control and censor, to troll and dox, but nothing could be farther from the truth. Barlow wrote the Declaration and co-founded the Electronic Frontier Foundation precisely because he foresaw those possibilities: he saw that the world would be remade by general-purpose networks tied to general-purpose computers, and that unless we committed ourselves to making that network free, and fair, and open, that it would give the powerful and wicked the power to exert unprecedented, near-total control over our lives.
> Today, Barlow is dead, and his vision is vindicated: the risks Barlow foresaw (along with other EFF founders like John Gilmore and Mitch Kapor) are more imminent than ever; the organization that he started and the movement he kicked off has never been more badly needed.
> Lots of people are, quite understandably, pointing to Barlow's famous Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace (which was published 22 years ago today). Barlow later admitted that he dashed most of that off in a bar during the World Economic Forum, without much thought. And that's why I'm going to separately suggest two other things by Barlow to read as well. The first was his Wired piece, The Economy of Ideas from 1994, the second year of Wired's existence, and where Barlow's wisdom was found in every issue. Despite being written almost a quarter of a century ago, The Economy of Ideas is still fresh and relevant today. It is more thoughtful and detailed than his later "Declaration" and, if anything, I would imagine that Barlow was annoyed that the piece is still so relevant today. He'd think we should be way beyond the points he was making in 1994, but we are not.