David Bowie Predicted the Internet’s Impact in 1999 to an Incredulous Interviewer

For David Bowie, it seems like music was just the most relevant tool for him to express his artistic vision and help reshape the world. As he tells it in this 1999 interview, if he’d been born a bit later, he might have chosen a different outlet for his rebellious tendencies: the Internet.

That’s what he told the BBC’s Jeremy Paxton, to a rather incredulous reception. In the interview above, you can watch Bowie essentially predict the cultural impact of the Internet, “both good and bad.” In 1999, the youths especially had already picked up on the promise of the Internet, but it’s hard to say that many people fully understood what it would do to the world—or that we even fully understand now.

But Bowie, with a thick side of sarcasm, was fairly certain that it would help break down our preconceived notions of how the world is in a way that, especially after 2016, seems eerily prescient.

(via Gizmodo, image via screengrab)

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