David Bowie Predicts the Good & Bad of the Internet in 1999: “We’re on the Cusp of Something Exhilarating and Terrifying”

“We’re on the cusp of some­thing exhil­a­rat­ing and ter­ri­fy­ing.”

The year is 1999 and David Bowie, in shag­gy hair and groovy glass­es, has seen the future and it is the Inter­net.

In this short but fas­ci­nat­ing inter­view with BBC’s stal­wart and with­er­ing inter­roga­tor cum inter­view­er Jere­my Pax­man, Bowie offers a fore­cast of the decades to come, and gets most of it right, if not all. Pax­man dole­ful­ly plays devil’s advo­cate, although I sus­pect he did real­ly see the Net as a “tool”– sim­ply a repack­ag­ing of an exist­ing medi­um.

“It’s an alien life form that just land­ed,” Bowie coun­ters.

Bowie, who had set up his own bowie.net as a pri­vate ISP the pre­vi­ous year, begins by say­ing that if he had start­ed his career in 1999, he would not have been a musi­cian, but a “fan col­lect­ing records.”

It sound­ed provoca­tive at the time, but Bowie makes a point here that has tak­en on more cre­dence in recent years–that the rev­o­lu­tion­ary sta­tus of rock in the ‘60s and ‘70s was tied to its rar­i­ty, that the inabil­i­ty to read­i­ly hear music gave it pow­er and cur­ren­cy. Rock is now “a career oppor­tu­ni­ty,” he says, and the Inter­net now has the allure that rock once did.

What Bowie might not have seen is how quick­ly that allure would wear off. The Inter­net no longer has a mys­tery to it. It’s clos­er to a pub­lic util­i­ty, odd­ly a point that Bowie makes lat­er when talk­ing about the inven­tion of the tele­phone.

Bowie also approved of the demys­ti­fi­ca­tion between the artist and audi­ence that the Inter­net was pro­vid­ing. In his final decade, how­ev­er, he would seek out anonymi­ty and pri­va­cy, drop­ping his final two albums sud­den­ly with­out fan­fare and refus­ing all inter­views. He also didn’t fore­see the kind of trolling that sends celebri­ties and artists off of social media.

Pax­man sees the frag­men­ta­tion of the Inter­net as a prob­lem; Bowie sees it as a plus.

“The poten­tial of what the Inter­net is going to do to soci­ety, both good and bad, is unimag­in­able.”

There’s a lot more to unpack in this seg­ment, and let your dif­fer­ing view­points be known in the com­ments. It’s what Bowie would have want­ed.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Bowie Offers Advice for Aspir­ing Artists: “Go a Lit­tle Out of Your Depth,” “Nev­er Ful­fill Oth­er People’s Expec­ta­tions”

David Bowie on Why It’s Crazy to Make Art–and We Do It Any­way (1998)

Watch David Bowie Per­form “Star­man” on Top of the Pops: Vot­ed the Great­est Music Per­for­mance Ever on the BBC (1972)

How David Bowie Used William S. Bur­roughs’ Cut-Up Method to Write His Unfor­get­table Lyrics

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.