Rock legend, fashion icon, artistic chameleon, gender provocateur may just be some of the things you would remember the multi-faceted and multi-talented David Bowie with, but what you might not know was that he was in fact a technology visionary, who trailblazed the way for generations of musicians, artists, fashion designers and entrepreneurs to come.
Bowie who recently passed away after an 18-month battle with cancer will always be remembered as someone who was fearless and never afraid of change, one who embraced the future with one arm and help shape it with another.
Here are 5 reasons why David Bowie was a tech visionary.
1) He accurately foresaw the impact of the Internet
Unlike many of his counterparts, Bowie realized the inherent magnitude of the Internet as something that would disrupt and alter the entire paradigm of not just the industry but the way people would interconnect and live their lives. Bowie spoke on his thoughts about the Internet in a 1999 interview with British journalist Jeremy Paxman which resurfaced on YouTube shortly after his death. “I wanted to be a musician because it seemed rebellious, it seemed subversive, one could effect change to a form”, Bowie said.
“The Internet carries the flag of being subversive and possibly rebellious, and chaotic and nihilistic.”
He went on to ironically described the Internet as “an alien life form”, one of the many personas he portrayed on stage and screen – as Ziggy Stardust, Jareth the Goblin King and Aladdin Sane to name a few. “I don’t think we’ve seen the tip of the iceberg,” Bowie continued. “It’s almost if we’re on the cusp of something both exhilarating and terrifying.”
In a separate interview with Kim Nash (then a senior writer at Computerworld), Bowie talked about his relation with the Internet:
“The Internet really is a technology model of how I think. It thrives on its own chaos. It’s willing to change its mind overnight, combine things that shouldn’t be bedfellows. I see it as a brother.”
Perhaps, the Starman saw a resemblance of his ideals in what the Internet personified and saw a new frontier to expound on.
2) He launched his own Internet Service Provider
Before the turn of the century and at a time where most major corporations were still trying to fathom the impact of the Internet, the rock legend staked his claim in Bowie-like fashion to launch BowieNet in 1998, his very own ISP through a tech company called Ultrastar which he co-founded.
Subscribers would get their very own personalized @david-bowie.com email and an “uncensored” access to the Internet and an exclusive access to Bowie’s photos, music videos, interviews, blog and even a 3-D chat platform for fans to connect, where Bowie himself would clandestinely engage in every now and then under a pseudonym.
Although the service eventually shutdown in 2006 following Bowie’s retirement two years earlier, BowieNet was presumably never meant to compete with ISP giants like AOL and Claranet at the time, but offer something far more revolutionary and powerful; a groundbreaking and intimate medium for audience and artist to connect. It would indeed pave the way for future music-centric sites like MySpace and other online fan communities. BowieNet was even recognized as the first artist-created Internet Service Provider by the Guinness World Record.
3) He had his own brand of security bonds and an online bank, yes bank
Bowie wasn’t just a creative genius, he had the financial acumen of a Wall Street banker as well. No stranger to the financial world, Bowie was the first major artist to securitize royalties from the future revenues of his songs under “Bowie Bonds”, which reportedly earned him a whopping $55 million back in 1997.
In an age before peer-to-peer business loans and Bitcoins, Bowie was the crowdsourcing pioneer. By securitizing his royalties, Bowie put up his catalogue of work as collateral and eluded any personal liability for the debt. This set a trend for artists and bands like James Brown and Iron Maiden, who followed in Bowie’s steps.
The following year, USAbankshares.com approached Bowie with the idea of co-branding an online bank under his own brand, marking another prescient venture for the rock legend. Before long, BowieBanc.com was launched where customers would get ATM cards, credit cards, checks and other banking accoutrements emblazoned with Bowie’s name and image and a year’s subscription to BowieNet.
Although the enterprise was short-lived due to unprofitable losses, Bowie remained financially unscathed. Instead, Bowie set a precedent for other artists to explore unrelated realms.
When Paxman asked if there was any point in earning more money, Bowie jokingly replied, “Do you know how expensive it is to get involve in the Internet?”
He continued on to explain that the majority of money he earned would somehow be plowed back into a new project and of course, to leave an inheritance for his family. “I’m not a buyer of stuff but I do tend to regard money as the oil to get other things going. I feel more comfortable with it like that”, he said.
4) He predicted the future of the music industry
In the days predating Napster, Bowie was the first major artist to release a track online for download. His single Telling Lies from the album Earthling was downloaded over 300,000 times. Staggering, considering people spent an average of 30 minutes online in a month back then (it took the same amount of time just to download a song). He was also one of the few pioneering artists to release an entire album [Hours] for download over the internet.
In the 1999 interview with Nash, Bowie also talked about record labels becoming less irrelevant and the notion of people paying for access to music online. “They [record corporations] don’t stand a chance. The industry isn’t going to come crashing down, but [custom albums online] will be integrated into a new way of selling. They will not be able to stop. There are too many little independent companies keen to do real online downloading. They will become so popular that, by force, corporations will have to capitulate,” Bowie told Nash.
In a separate interview with the New York Times in 2002, Bowie predicted the demise of copyrights within the next ten years (not quite) before he made his most accurate prediction yet:
“Music itself is going to become like running water or electricity.”
Fast forward a few years and we have iTunes and Spotify.
5) He embraced technology and the audience in his craft
David Bowie has been using technology in the creation process of his work since the 1980’s, writing lyrics and creating lithographs on his Macintosh computer. Therefore, it was no surprise when Bowie collaborated with Gracenote CTO and Co-founder Ty Roberts, using his software to generate song ideas, titles, and lyrics. The software known as Verbasizer, was designed to enhance Bowie’s cut-up techniques and speed up the creation process. Roberts had the privilege of observing Bowie’s unique working methods in the creation of his concept album “Outside”.
Bowie realized that the internet was not just a mass marketing tool but a platform for the artist and audience to commune in a non-exclusive and collaborative manner. In 1999, Bowie ran an online contest on his portal BowieNet where over 80,000 participants would send in lyrics to help co-write a song. The track “What’s Really Happening” featured on the album Hours was to become the world’s first “cyber-song”. In the same interview with Paxman in 1999, Bowie mentioned the French-American artist Duchamp, as one of the artists who were prescient with the idea that a piece of work is not finished until the audience comes to it and add their own interpretation and what the piece of art is all about is the gray space in the middle.
“That gray space in the middle is what the 21st century is going to be all about,” Bowie said.
A true original in every sense of the word, Bowie’s influence on the digital world has undoubtedly left a mark on music, art and commerce for generations to come. Every time David Bowie reinvented himself or released a new single, he took all of us along with him. What made Bowie more than a rock legend was his ability to unite the outliers, making everyone feel like they belonged, as though they could be invincible and in his immortal words, heroes just for one day.
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This guest post is written by Justin Yong. Justin is student at University of Hertfordshire, UK, and currently a Freelance Writer for Lean Metrics Pte. Ltd.
