<i>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 on the cusp of something exhilarating and terrifying.<p>Interviewer: It's just a tool, though, isn't it?<p>Bowie: No, it's not... no, it's an alien life form [laughs]. It's just arrived from Mars.
</i><p>1998?
The interview is gold. (I shared it earlier but it didn't garner enough attention <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10883028" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10883028</a>)<p>He perfectly summarized the relationship between the art and the internet: "That gray space in the middle (between the artist and the audience) is what the 21st century is about"<p>Also it is fascinating how certain he was that new mediums will emerge and how different they will be from what we knew back then. When we were pioneering current style of social media with Jaiku back in 2006, many smart people failed to understood how powerful social broadcast media could be. But Bowie was already in 2000 understanding the power of it.
It's scary to think about how ephemeral some of these early internet experiments are. Wayback Machine is great for static sites, but I'm amazed that enough of this interactive media/software was captured to even report on. I hope that the Bowie camp has some smart archivists who will preserve this unique material.
Omikron (1999) was a great game. It was one of the first open world games with real 3D graphics. You could ride a taxi around the city, enter buildings, etc. Of course GTA3 (2001) took it to the next level, but in 1999 GTA still was 2D: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Theft_Auto_2" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Theft_Auto_2</a> .<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omikron:_The_Nomad_Soul" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omikron:_The_Nomad_Soul</a>
A non-Flash version of the interview: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FiK7s_0tGsg" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FiK7s_0tGsg</a>
The interviewer's perspective was no less prophetic about the current reality. The internet is mostly a tool to spread the same old media type of content, just more and faster. A lot more America's Favorite Home videos and niche channels than were possible before. A lot more spam, gossip and passing notes, which is not very alien.<p>Engelbart also thought we would get somewhere alien. He underestimated the power of the mainstream.
For anyone trying to find the website on the WaybackMachine:<p>The BowieNet domain was davidbowie.com, not bowie.net (as noted under the screenshot in the article).
Some very ignorant remarks and assumptions of people who did not watch the full live BBC video interview relating to him, music & the internet and are taking snippets - of course the internet was estsblished before 1998!!! Some folks do not have a command of the english language and think they are computer boffins. He was not talking "Microsoft" for example - relative to music , him and people (audience) ... Very smart man - also get the interviewer's question to comprehend his response ... People who were born in the middle 70s & after, unless savy and forward thinking do not get: "David Bowie, an internet pioneer" YES, most definitely I concur; he was & is ... You're programmed already & not an individual (thinking tech facts blah) nor creative as he was & he was the 1st "Personality" to offer himself as an ISP - #Fact RIP Mr. JONES
I don't remember BowieNet at all, and I was definitely cheerfully using dialup in the UK, with Demon Internet, in the late nineties ('97 onwards I'd say). Was it really a big deal? I can't find out much information about it other than a bunch of news sites this week all regurgitating variants of the same material.