David Bowie on Social Media. Other things. In 2000.

Obituary Here's Bowie being interviewed by Paxman on Newsnight at the turn of the millennium. The whole thing is worth watching, but the key moment happens when Paxo poo-poos claims about the internet have been exaggerated, Bowie says this:

"I don't think we've even seen the tip of the iceberg. I think the potential of what the internet is going to do to society, both good and bad is unimaginable. I think we're actually on the cusp of something exhilarating and terrifying."

Paxman retorts, "It's just a tool though isn't it?"

"No it's not. No. It's an alien life form."

"It's just simply a different delivery system there, whereas your arguing something more profound." Paxman proposed.  To which Bowie replies.

"I'm talking about the actual context and the state of content is going to be so different to anything we can really envisage at the moment, where in interplay between the user and the provider will be so in sympatico it's going to crush our ideas of what mediums are all about.  It's happening in every form.  It's happening in visual art.  The breakthroughs in the early part of the century with people like Duchamps who were so prescient in what they were doing and putting down.  The idea that the work isn't finished until the audience come to it and add their own interpretation and what the piece of art is about is the grey space in the middle.  That grey space in the middle is what the twenty-first century is going to be about."

Yes, yes it is.  RIP.