In 1996 Bowie became the first major artist to make a single release downloadable. ‘Telling Lies’ took about 11 minutes to download using a dial-up connection. He set up his own Internet Provider in 1998 called BowieNet. Users were given access to exclusive content and bonus material.
In 1999, David Bowie gave a famous interview on BBC Newsnight and made some remarks about the internet, which was at that time a burgeoning technology. His remarks seemed to predict some of the social fragmentation and chaos catalyzed by the internet in the 2010s and early 2020s.
At the time, Bowie told BBC interviewer Jeremy Paxman that the internet seemed subversive to him, because society's wielders of power and influence didn't yet have a monopoly over it.
“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...
“I’m talking about the actual context and the state of content is going to be so different to anything that we can really envisage at the moment. Where the interplay between the user and the provider will be so in simpatico, it’s going to crush our ideas of what mediums are all about...
“The idea that the piece of work is not 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 21st century is going to be about.”
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