After having taught for several years at the University of Antwerp (Belgium), he set up Riverland with the help of Bill Ziff in 1990 to publish the first personal computer magazines in the Benelux. In 1994, when Ziff announced the sale of the publishing empire to Forstmann Little & Company, De Brouwer sold his titles to VNU. He continued publishing WAVE, a cyberpunk ‘techno-gigazine’, but plans to merge the publication with Mondo 2000, with which it shared some writers such as R.U Sirius, did not materialize as expected.

The Dadaist magazine, with editor-in-chief Michel Bauwens and designed by graffiti legend Niels Shoe Meulman, was put on display for a period in the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, but eventually ceased publication due to the success and market domination of Wired Magazine.

Other Internet companies related to Riverland were ultimately merged into Riverland Holding, which went on to become one of the founding members of Tim Berners-Lee’s Web Accessibility Initiative alongside Microsoft and IBM.