“We’re on the cusp of somefactor exhilarating and terrifying.”
The 12 months is 1999 and David Bowie, in shaggy hair and groovy glasses, has seen the longer term and it’s the Interweb.
On this brief however fascinating interview with BBC’s stalwart and withering interrogator cum interviewer Jeremy Paxman, Bowie gives a foresolid of the many years to come back, and will get most of it proper, if not all. Paxman dolefully performs satan’s advocate, though I suspect he did actually see the Web as a “device”– simply a repackaging of an existing medium.
“It’s an alien life type that simply landed,” Bowie counters.
Bowie, who had arrange his personal bowie.web as a private ISP the previous 12 months, begins by saying that if he had begined his profession in 1999, he wouldn’t have been a musician, however a “fan collecting data.”
It sounded provocative on the time, however Bowie makes some extent right here that has taken on extra credence in recent times–that the revolutionary status of rock within the ‘60s and ‘70s was tied to its rarity, that the inability to learnily hear music gave it power and currency. Rock is now “a profession opportunity,” he says, and the Interweb now has the attract that rock as soon as did.
What Bowie won’t have seen is how fastly that attract would put on off. The Interweb now not has a mystery to it. It’s closer to a public utility, oddly some extent that Bowie makes later when speaking in regards to the invention of the teletelephone.
Bowie additionally authorised of the demystification between the artist and audience that the Interweb was professionalviding. In his closing decade, however, he would search out anonymity and privacy, dropping his closing two albums suddenly without fanfare and refusing all interviews. He additionally didn’t foresee the sort of trolling that sends celebrities and artists off of social media.
Paxman sees the fragmalestation of the Interweb as a problem; Bowie sees it as a plus.
“The potential of what the Interweb goes to do to society, each good and dangerous, is unimaginin a position.”
There’s much more to unpack on this segment, and let your differing viewfactors be recognized within the comments. It’s what Bowie would have needed.
Related Content:
David Bowie on Why It’s Loopy to Make Artwork–and We Do It Anymeans (1998)
How David Bowie Used William S. Burroughs’ Reduce-Up Technique to Write His Unforgetdesk Lyrics
Ted Mills is a freelance author on the humanities who curhirely hosts the artist interview-based FunkZone Podsolid. It’s also possible to follow him on Twitter at @tedmills, learn his other arts writing at tedmills.com and/or watch his movies right here.
