People can’t believe how accurate David Bowie's 1999 prediction of the internet was

Virgin Radio

19 Oct 2022, 09:33

David Bowie was always a visionary, and this is perfectly illustrated by a clip from 1999 which has resurfaced, in which he gave his predictions about what shape the internet would take.

In 1999, the internet was still at a very early stage. This was well before Facebook came along, and even before we all spent ages making our MySpace pages look good. Indeed, the internet before the turn of the century was pretty simple. It was used for email, visiting web pages, and for teens to spend ages Instant Messaging their friends after school, as MSN Messenger was launched that year.

Many homes didn’t have the world wide web, or even personal computers, at that stage, and it’s safe to say that not everyone realised just how massive an impact the internet would have on all of our lives over the coming decades. 

However, Bowie knew the score.

In an interview with Jeremy Paxman for BBC Newsnight back in 1999, the legendary artist gave his views on where the internet would go in the future. 

With Paxman playing down the impact that the ‘delivery system’ would have on the world, the Aladdin Sane singer said: “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.”

He continued: “I think we're actually on the cusp of something exhilarating and terrifying."

Whilst Paxman remained unconvinced, Bowie said: “I'm talking about the context and the actual state of content is going to be so different to anything that we can envisage at the moment.”

Watch a clip here: 

Twitter users were impressed by Bowie’s vision. One commenter wrote: “Spooky. He nailed it.”

Someone else said: “Wow amazing. Such a visionary. He’s the Martian.”

On the YouTube clip of the full interview, one commenter wrote: “Bowie understood the Internet in a way Paxman couldn't begin to conceive. What a genius.”