Bowie PDF Book from JFK247

perceptive observations anyone’s ever made about
our networked world’. In the late nineties, Bowie saw
the web’s potential for building new communities; yet
he also spotted the long-term implications for
copyright, predicting how authorship and intellectual
property would become endangered. Most
presciently, in 2002 he suggested that music ‘is
going to become like running water or electricity’,
anticipating the rise of streaming services like
Spotify. Bowie would always stop short of describing
himself as any kind of visionary – his opinions on the
evolution of modern culture were usually confined to
promotional interviews. But his perceptiveness
inspired Naughton to comment, in 2010, ‘If you want
to know the future, ask a musician.’
By January 1998, David was promoting the
launch of his own websites, davidbowie.com and
bowieart.com, and on 1 September an internet
provider, BowieNet (subscription fee $19.95 per
month). One of the staff at Outside, his PR company,
remembers that the launch was ‘one of the most
stressful things I can remember, there would be
webcasts with him, Boy George, Visconti – and he
absolutely loved it’. The obsession – David would
also drop in on his own chatrooms; his handle
‘sailor’ – was also recreational; he’d spend hours
trawling the world wide web, or looking for bargains
on eBay.
Over the same year that the Bowie brand was
launched online, the man himself was launched as
an independent digital entity, too. Towards the end
of 1998, David called Reeves Gabrels over to