He specializes in the transition of media industries from print and broadcast growth of the early 20th century to the computer mediated technologies of the present. The interplay of policy, economics and industrial practices form the frames used to track these transitions. A related interest is in public opinion and access to new media like the Internet by minorities and splinter political groups. Bowes is coordinator of the EC3 Lab, a research facility devoted to electronic commerce, usability, computer-mediated education and social research analysis.

Bowes has lectured and written widely on these subjects for 30 years. He has taught at the University of North Dakota, Dublin City University (Ireland) and Charles Sturt University (Australia) where he was a Fulbright visiting scholar. He has been a participant in the Annenburg Telecommunications Workshops and The Gannett Foundation workshops on new media. He was co-director of the Pacific Advanced Communication Consortium  (now PNWER), a Pacific Northwest union of telecommunications industries, higher education and state/provincial governments. For 28 years prior to coming to SFU/Surrey, he was on the faculty of the University of Washington's School of Communication and was an adjunct in the Department of Technical Communication.

He is currently a principal investigator in a three year study (2002-5) of culture, trust and electronic commerce - eLoyalty - funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

He is the author of a major report for the National Networks of Libraries of Medicine, Communication and Community Development for Health Information, (1998) and is currently evaluating the effect of high speed internet connections to Native American health centers.  He is senior author of "Tradition, Confusion and Multimedia: Developing New Standards from Old Industrial Roots," International Engineering Consortium, Annual Review of Communications, 1994; "Standards and Development of a High Definition Television System in the US," Technical Communication, 1993 (both with Scott Elliott); Merging on the Information Highway: New Technologies and Old Media Industries [in process]. Co-author (with Keith Stamm), The Mass Communication Process (1990, revised ed.). Co-editor (with Alex Edelstein and Sheldon M. Harsel), Information Societies: Comparing the Japanese and American Experience (1978).

Bowes completed the first systematic survey of gay/lesbian residents of Seattle and their life quality (1991) and recently published "Out of the Closet and into the Marketplace" in Gays, Lesbians and Consumer Behaviour (Dan Wardlow ed., 1996) based on this work. In 1999, he was appointed to the national research board of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), an organization that studies portrayal of minorities in media, both old and new.

He has held various jobs outside academe including work for Science Research Associates (Chicago), a subsidiary of McGraw-Hill, and the U.S. Agency for International Development. He has received grants and completed research contracts with the National Networks of Libraries of Medicine, the Portland Northwest Area Indian Health Board, the U.S. Department of the Interior, the State of North Dakota, the European Economic Union, the U.S. Office of Education, Weyerhauser Corporation, Union-Carbide, AT&T and the Gannett Newspaper Foundation.

Bowes received an A.B. degree from Hamilton College (psychology), his M.S. from Syracuse University (telecommunications) and the Ph.D. from Michigan State University (telecommunications).