Bill Goodwin, fresh from Bowie's retrospective at the V&A Museum, considers one of the twentieth century's greatest musicians influence on computer storage technology. David Bowie's contribution to the computer storage industry has often been under-

Español: David Bowie sobre el escenario del festival "Rock in Chile", realizado en el Estadio Nacional de Chile, 27 de septiembre de 1990. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
appreciated. But with a major retrospective at the
Victoria & Albert Museum, and his first album for a decade, it is time to reassess Bowie's influence on the development storage arrays.
Bowie's interest in storage began early in his career, with his 1967 debut anticipating the rise of the
Massive Array of Idle Disks, some two decades before they become common place in the IT department.
Maid of Bond Street will always remain a landmark work in the history of storage innovation.
For many,
Ziggy Stardust is the apogee of Bowie's storage career. Who can forget Bowie's prescient call for
data deduplication technology in his 1972 song
Five Years. "My brain hurt like a warehouse," Bowie cried, "I had no room to spare. I had to cram so many things to store everything in there."
But to let Ziggy eclipse Bowie's influence on storage would be folly. Aladdin Sane, inspired by
Aladdin Knowledge Systems, has much to teach us.
As Sane, Bowie, took storage to a new level of theatricality. The lightening stripe
Flash, which decorated Bowie's schizophrenic alter ego, heralded a new era of hyper-speed data retrieval.
Indeed, Sane, more than any other of Bowie's characters, reminds us of the vital role of the
Storage Area Network Extension, in our fractured society.
It would be folly to disregard Bowie's Berlin period, when developments in data retrieval technology inspired Bowie to replace glam rock, with a harder techno-sound.
What starker reminder could there be about the dangers of poor disaster recovery planning, in Bowie's prescient song, "
Always crashing in the same car" ? We could indeed be hero's if only we had dual redundant data centres.
Next week we consider
Tim Machine's impact on the
Server Market.
What are your favourite Bowie storage tracks ? Email me at wgoodwin@techtarget.com and I will publish the best entries.
Recent Comments
grammo oro on Persecuted sons club... : By insisting on the prosecution of Julian Assange,...
Stephen Fidl on Android users secretly lu... : It comes down to price and choice. Apple makes be...
DaveP on How to friend a felon... : Ian Flemming : From Russia With LIKE ...
32 inch plas on World Cup = good excuse f... : Rule of thumb is to get the biggest screen you can...
M. on Document merge delays Cas... : Has a full version of the verdict emerged online, ...
Mark Kobayas on Y-CIO, it's fun to play a... : It's looks like someone from Paddy Power has infil...
Babe Pig in on Cops seek tweeting PigSpo... : Oi, you forget to mention that while it sounds lik...
Kelly Davies on How to be Confused.com ab... : Hi, I look after the PR at Confused.com - thanks f...
Ken Symes on Blessed be the smartphone... : This is a great story! If I lived in Nova Scotia, ...