I know much has been written about the passing of David Bowie this week and even more shared on social media and it’s times like these that you realise again the power of the Internet.
It gives voice to a community united around one thing and it allows us to share all our different memories, perspectives, views – what we each admired about him, how he inspired each of us, how he made each of us laugh with his wit and humour.
It allows us to grieve individually yet collectively, privately yet publicly – and it was this duplicity and plurality of the Internet that David Bowie foresaw in this interview he did with Jeremy Paxman in 1999.
In this video, you can see the BBC interviewer clearly struggling with the notion of the Internet to be anything more than a delivery medium and Bowie absolutely resolute about the power of the Internet to be an “unimaginable” force, good or bad.
Like all his fans, I loved his music. His trend-setting style. His difference. I am glad I caught him at a concert in Singapore and the Starman held us in thrall for three solid hours. Mostly, I loved his creativity and inventive genius. And his vision which this video, shared on Facebook, reminded me of.
Back in 1999 – that’s 16 years ago – he already saw the Internet as the flag of rebellion and subversion and that it would take over the role that music played in the 60s and 70s.
He embraced the demystification process between artist and audience. Now it’s about sub groups and genres, about the community and audience, he said.
Think about that statement and how it applies to travel. The Internet has brought transparency to travel. Prices are transparent, information is transparent, knowledge is shared. Travel has also broken up into sub groups and genres, and communities.
In the past, he said, there was a single absolute creative society with known truths and lies, no duplicity or plurality. That’s broken down. “The singularity has disappeared” and “we are living in total fragmentation”.
Think about how fragmented the travel business has become – the splintering force of the Internet.
In 1999, Bowie argued, we’ve only seen the tip of the iceberg. What the Internet is going to do, good or bad, is unimaginable. We’re on the cusp of something exhilarating and terrifying, he said.
And when Paxman retorts, isn’t it just a tool, Bowie laughs, “No, it’s an alien life form.”
More than simply a different delivery system, he said the Internet would change “context and state of content”.
He was right 19 years ago and you could argue that his words ring true today with the mobile revolution. We are on the cusp of something “exhilarating and terrifying” and an “unimaginable” force. This next wave will take us beyond fragmentation, it will give us more individual power yet be part of an even bigger collective and once again changes “context and state of content”.
The Internet, he said, has made the interplay between the user and provider so simpatico it will crush our idea of what mediums are all about. “A piece of work is not finished until the audience comes to it and add their own interpretation and what that piece of art is about is the grey space in the middle. That grey space is what the 21st century is all about,” said Bowie.
It is this grey space travel providers have to get right too.
There’s another thing Bowie said that I think we will agree with – “you know how expensive it is to get involved in the Internet?”
That’s why scale and resource are critical if you want to play big in this grey space. That, or stay black and white.
If you stripped down Bowie to his essence, he was simply a gentleman, a thinker, a creative force. Nothing grey about that.