More than an hour late for our luncheon at Zuni Cafй, a stylish restaurant on San Francisco's Market Street, John Perry Barlow finally pulls up on his 1970 BMW R75/5motorcycle with his Swedish girlfriend, Lotte, in tow. Dressed in a black shirt, black blazer, black cravat, and jeans, he cuts a swashbuckling figure.

Mr. Barlow (or "John Perry" to his friends) is sincerely sorry for being so late, but his charm is disarming. He is a man who could have done anything with his life--and has. A self-described "cognitive dissident,"he cofounded the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a nonprofit organization that's dedicated to preserving the rights of "digital citizens." He was around when Louis Rossetto and Jane Metcalfe founded Wired, and he still writes for the magazine. But these days, Mr. Barlow makes most of his money working as a consultant and giving speeches. (Recently he stumped a gathering of regional Federal Reserve bankers when he asked them to define money. The only answer ventured: "Whatever Alan Greenspan tells us it is.")

Mr. Barlow has led several other lives. For much of his adulthood, he worked as a cattle rancher in Wyoming, an occupation learned from his father. (He sold the ranch in 1988 when he realized that the CEOs and movie stars who'd bought the neighboring ranches did not have to support themselves by ranching--a depressing thought, presumably, for the professional cattleman who valued the authentic Western experience.) During his Western period, he wrote songs for the Grateful Dead. Even his motorcycle has a countercultural history: Motorcycle magazine gave him the bike in exchange for a review of its performance on a New York­to­San Francisco trip.

Mr. Barlow's past lives have informed his current role as a spokesman for the digital generation. Although he jokes that it's "very difficultfor me to do anything without feeling I am on a mission from God," he believes there is a spiritual quality to his work. In keeping with the mission of the EFF, Mr. Barlow is concerned about laws that restrict free speech on the Internet. But he is particularly passionate when he talks about how technology could inspire the creation of a new social order.

Mr. Barlow, who describes himself as an "anticompany guy," deplores the separation between work and life that corporate employment enforces. He says most organizations are "totalitarian" and claims that many companies still treat their workers as if they were drones standing in front of lathes.

But Mr. Barlow does not think the answer lies in government intervention. ("Most congressmen are in data shock," he contends.) Instead, he looks forward to an era when there are no jobs. Technology has made workers "reconfigurable," he thinks, and in this so-called information economy, he foresees a workforce composed entirely of free agents. In his warmer moments, Mr. Barlow anticipates a return to barter as the universal means of trade. "There are squishier levels of transactions in this world than buying things with money," he says. "Everything does not have to fit into a double-column bookkeeping system."

There are, of course, problems with such a vision. Mr. Barlow becomes slightly flustered when Lotte points out that currencies facilitate trade by creating a more liquid market. He also concedes that many people are afraid of self-employment. ("I feel for those folks," he says. "But there just isn't any safe place for them to go.") And he makes very little allowance for the dangerous power of monopolies.(Surprisingly, he says he told Bill Gates three years ago that he should ignore Microsoft's consent decree. Mr. Barlow's reasoning? "Monopolies disappear catastrophically again and again.")

Mr. Barlow sees his role as questioning the "filters" through which others view life. "I make trouble for people who don't think," he says. "I'm trying to get people outside of their reality-distortion fields."

Mr. Barlow does not come off as naпve. Rather, he seems to be challenging people who limit themselves by believing they can't do anything they want. The key for Mr. Barlow is human relationships, not credentials. "It's not what you know; it's who you know," he says. "I have no problem with that." He speaks movingly of a recent trip to Africa in which he witnessed an intricate network of relationships at a village well. Africans, he says, are far happier than Americans. "A lot of things cannot be explained by the desire to make money," he observes.

As we bid good-bye to Mr. Barlow, we recognize that this is a man who has traveled a long way without a road map and enjoyed every mile. We are grateful for the ride.