To commemorate the 79th anniversary of David Bowie's birth & nearly the 10th anniversary of his passing, I've written a mini-history of Bowie's website from 2004 to 2016. BowieNet, his pioneering social network, had basically been discontinued. But when his website did reactivate in 2013, Bowie conspicuously shunned social media ("Dropped my cell phone down below"). We can learn a lot from him. https://cybercultural.com/p/bowienet-2004-2016/ #BowieForever 👨🎤
It took me ages to find screenshots of BowieNet as it looked on launch in September 1998, but I finally found some beauties. Oh, and I explain how BowieNet not only became the default online community for David Bowie fans, it also anticipated the social networks that would emerge in the 2000s, like Facebook and Reddit. https://cybercultural.com/p/bowienet-launch-1998/ #InternetHistory #BowieForever
In 1999, David Bowie starred in a 3D game about a hacker attacked by a demon in meatspace, who then escapes into the Omikron network. “An old legend recounts that only a nomad soul can hunt the demons out of Omikron,” he says in the introduction.
The music became his album 'hours...', but in retrospect the video game didn't quite match the likes of Everquest and Ultima Online for "human presence." https://cybercultural.com/p/bowie-1999-omikron/ #InternetHistory #BowieForever
