The Rise and Fall of BowieNet

http://www.openculture.com/2020/04/when-david-bowie-launched-his-own-internet-service-provider.html

by vo2maxer • 6 years ago

120 28 6 years ago

pstuart• 6 years ago

He was a visionary. He also tried his hand at a branded VISA card: https://www.forbes.com/2000/03/04/feat.html#4304e53130da

I think worshipping people is not a healthy habit, but I make an exception for him.

nostromo2• 6 years ago

I love Bowie too.

But the credit card, the ISP, the whatever... I don't care about any of that. That's typical for people that are brands to make a quick buck, like Branson putting his "Virgin" name on a cellphone company, Trump putting his name on steaks, or Kim Kardashian putting her name on a perfume.

It's all basically the George Foreman Grill -- a company leases the name from the famous person to promote something they have little to do with.

boulos• 6 years ago

The article actually calls out that this wasn't the case for the ISP at least:

As Ars Technica's interview with BowieNet co-founder Ron Roy confirms, Bowie didn't just lend the enterprise his brand but was "tremendously involved from day one." As Roy tells it, Bowie kept BowieNet fresh "by exploring new technologies to keep fans engaged and excited. He always preached [that] it's about the experience, the new."

knolax• 6 years ago

Your comment prompted me google George Foreman and I'm surprised to find that he was actually a celebrity (boxer) and not the founder of the company as I assumed.

adventured2• 6 years ago

I'm sure a lot of people here have already seen it, however this 1999 interview with the BBC shows off Bowie's early understanding of the value & potential of the Internet (after the six minute mark):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FiK7s_0tGsg

moomin• 6 years ago

I still remember his response to being asked why people still used vinyl: https://youtu.be/bVmrNH0ZMi0

DanielMonteiro• 6 years ago

1999? We said a lot about it in his 1995 album, 1.Outside :D

He also released a single online in 1997 - one of the first artists to so.

adventured2• 6 years ago

Yes, 1999. I didn't imply it was the first time Bowie ever talked about the Internet.

The skepticism was high in 1999 that the Internet was going to be as large as it has become as a social and economic force. The Internet was economically miniscule at the time that BBC interview occurred. Bowie saying what he was saying even in 1999 was still considered very outlandish, which is why the interviewer reacts the way he does. At that point the Internet still had practically no tangible impact on or reach into the day to day lives of the vast majority of people everywhere. A mere 3%-4% of the world's population used the Internet at the time, mostly sparingly.

You have to go to after ~2004 before it became broadly accepted that the Internet was going to sustain as a major socioeconomic force and get far bigger. For example, circa 2001-2004 the media, analysts, et al. were still celebratory dancing on the grave of the dotcom bubble, slapping themselves on the back for their cynicism. It's why a story like Amazon.bomb got so much traction in 1999 (and was so celebrated in the years following), the skepticism was extremely high and broad for many years after 1999.

agency• 6 years ago

Such a breathtaking interview. The internet bit starts around 7min.

Bowie: I don't think we've even seen the tip of the iceberg. I think the potential of what the internet is going to do to society, both good and bad, is unimaginable. I think we're actually on the cusp of something exhilarating and terrifying.
Paxman: It's just a tool though, isn't it?
Bowie. No. No it's not. It's an alien life-form. It's just landed here.

xtiansimon• 6 years ago

That got me too! I immediately recalled a paper I found in one of the free NASA ebooks (see link below):

---

Susan Blackmore. “Dangerous Memes; or, What the Pandorans Let Loose” (Cosmos & Culture p297)

“This reveals the fundamental difference between all other theories of gene-culture coevolution and memetics: for the former the final arbiter is genetic advantage so that culture must always remain on its leash, even if the leash sometimes gets very loose; for memetics both genes and memes have replicator power and can drive change and creativity. For other theories, cultural traits are an aspect of the human phenotype, but for memetics they are living things in their own right.

These include a vast range of memeplexes (coadapted complexes of memes) that are copied, stored, and propagated by their human hosts using a wide variety of adaptations. All these, according to Humphrey, “should be regarded as living structures, not just metaphorically but technically.” (Dawkins 1989, 192).

Some survive predominantly because they are useful to their hosts (e.g., effective financial institutions, scientific theories, or useful technologies); others depend on fulfilling human desires and preferences (e.g., the arts, music, and literature); and still others are positively harmful, tricking their hosts into propagating them. We humans are selective imitation devices (Blackmore 2001); we try to select only the useful or valuable memes but are inevitably tricked by some of the rest.” (p. 302)

---

There are a lot of interesting bits in there, but this one has that creepy invasion has already happened and the aliens are living among us vibe to it.

I watched this Bowie interview before. I am of an age that I remember the 1990s and can recall how people talked about the internet's potential--always in terms of other previous technologies (really Jeremy Paxman, the telephone?).

Right now, I'm wondering what Bowie was reading and who he was talking to that informed his beliefs about the cultural change the internet was going to effect. (I was not as good a reader in the 1990s as I am now, so I'm sure I was describing the internet by the same unhelpful metaphors).

Did Bowie describe the internet as an alien life-form, because it's shocking/what we expect David-Ziggie Stardust-Bowie to say? Or, was his belief based-on, informed-by, his artistic practice (research), or ideology (his own personal experiences and world-view)? Of course the truth is likely a mix, but the bit which makes a difference--the bit that makes Bowie an informed speaker with lucid ideas and insight--would I expect be research (or surround yourself with people who are smarter than you).

---

Sunday March 29, NASA's free history e-book collection (nasa.gov) (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22718489)

And in the collection is this book, Cosmos & Culture: Cultural Evolution in a Cosmic Context Edited by Steven J. Dick and Mark L. Lupisella (2009?) (https://www.nasa.gov/connect/ebooks/hist_culture_cosmos_deta...)

shorts_theory• 6 years ago

I've been listening to Bowie's albums for years, but this is the first video interview I've ever seen of him. It struck me immediately how articulate and cogent he came across. Great video!

parenthesis• 6 years ago

The `Bowie Bond' from around the same time, was a much more interesting innovation:

https://ftalphaville.ft.com/2016/01/11/2149761/a-short-histo...

dang• 6 years ago

Discussed a bit in 2019: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18827158

cosmojg• 6 years ago

Archive link for those who don't want to create an account: https://archive.md/ubmyY

Also, holy crap, David Bowie was incredibly prescient.

”The absolute transformation of everything that we ever thought about music will take place within 10 years, and nothing is going to be able to stop it. I see absolutely no point in pretending that it’s not going to happen. I’m fully confident that copyright, for instance, will no longer exist in 10 years, and authorship and intellectual property is in for such a bashing.”
“Music itself is going to become like running water or electricity,” he added. ”So it’s like, just take advantage of these last few years because none of this is ever going to happen again. You’d better be prepared for doing a lot of touring because that’s really the only unique situation that’s going to be left. It’s terribly exciting. But on the other hand it doesn’t matter if you think it’s exciting or not; it’s what’s going to happen.”

If only we could hurry up and abolish intellectual property so we could get on with restructuring the economy around the inevitable.

Also, it's cool to see decentralized financial platforms like Ethereum already enabling a democratization of the kind of thing Bowie was trying to do with the Bowie Bond: https://asone.andysimon.co/

Mediterraneo10• 6 years ago

Sure, Bowie was right that the industry overall would swiftly move to a situation where many people are getting music for free (or for next to free on streaming) and artists tour to actually make money. Yet he himself was still able to spend nearly a decade from 2004–2012 not actively working, living entirely off his royalties that persisted thanks to those copyright laws, so things didn’t develop as suddenly and drastically as he suggested.

selimthegrim• 6 years ago

TIL James Altucher actually had a job at some point

koksik202• 6 years ago

AS number or it didn't happen

tptacek• 6 years ago

Most small ISPs in the mid-late 1990s didn't have ASNs, which you only needed once you scaled to the point where you were peering with your upstreams.

milquetoastaf• 6 years ago

Bowie was always bleeding edge. He helped fund Eyebeam (https://www.eyebeam.org/) as well

quijoteuniv• 6 years ago

The website had a collection of music (online radio?!)curated by him that he gathered for his son musical education. I wish i could listen that again. Incidentally Duncan jones mentioned in an interview he is not into music and listening to songs is ‘like watching your dad do accounting’.:p

robotbikes• 6 years ago

He also went all in on a video game Omikron: The Nomad Soul, starring in it and writing the sound track. It was kind of cool as I remember but I never finished it. Just another part of that era of Bowie.

Trasmatta• 6 years ago

That game is pretty bad but also fascinating at the same time.

axaxs• 6 years ago

I'm a big Bowie fan, but this isn't that notable imho. During this time, there were hundreds if not thousands of 'ISP's springing up. Even Kmart of all people had an ISP.

everluven• 6 years ago

Another on the list of Bowie innovations was a random lyrics generator called the Verbasizer https://youtu.be/H7Sgq0XoxPw

The Rise and Fall of BowieNet

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