David Bowie Predicts the Good & Bad of the Internet in 1999: “Were on the Cusp of Something Exhilarating and Terrifying [Video]

“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 …