David Bowie Wasn't Just an Incredible Artists, But a Tech Visionary Too

David Bowie wasn’t just a ground-breaking musician, who used a lot of innovative technology in his work; he was also an internet entrepreneur with a startup worth hundreds of millions of dollars in the dotcom-boom days. In September 1998, when less than half of all Americans had ever used the Internet and AOL dominated the online landscape, Bowie launched an Internet service provider (ISP) called BowieNet, which offered subscribers access for $19.95 a month -- first in the US, then in the United Kingdom. Bowie made sure to throw in lots of goodies, including the then-standard 20 free megabytes to build a home page, an e-mail address with a davidbowie.co.uk domain name for UK subscribers, and access to live chat sessions with Bowie himself and assorted musical collaborators.

BowieNet was operated by Bowie’s tech company UltraStar, which had a plan to bring celebrities online by creating their own ISPs and portals filled with customized online content. These would be on-ramps to the “Information Superhighway” for the celebrities’ fans, and UltraStar would make sure there would be plenty of billboards dedicated to the celebs as fans sped by. BowieNet was officially shuttered in March 2012 (“Whatever the truth, the old BowieNet, as we have known it, is kaput!” a Facebook announcement said), but not before a string of technological experiments, including: an Internet radio station with Bowie as DJ; encrypted music and video files designed to prevent piracy; concert live-streams; “BowieWorld,” where users could interact using 3-D avatars; and a “cyber song” contest that crowdsourced lyrics to a half-finished song Bowie had written.