All art really does is keep you focused on questions of humanity, and it really is about how do we get on with our maker.
David BowieRead
The Internet carries the flag of being subversive and possibly rebellious and chaotic, nihilistic.
Interpretation
The Internet is seen as a disruptive force that challenges traditional norms and authority.
David Bowie reflects on the nature of the Internet as a platform that embraces subversive, rebellious, and chaotic elements. This characterizes the Internet as a medium where ideas can flourish freely, often defying established conventions and inviting a sense of nihilism among its users, suggesting that it both empowers and destabilizes society.
In practice
In a discussion about the impact of social media on society.
All art really does is keep you focused on questions of humanity, and it really is about how do we get on with our maker.
I guess, taking away all the theatrics or the costuming and the outer layers of what I do, I'm a writer... I write.
I always had a repulsive need to be something more than human.
Nothing prepared me for your smile
But I've got to think of myself as the luckiest guy. Robert Johnson only had one album's worth of work as his legacy. That's all that life allowed him.
I'm an early riser. I get up between five and six, have coffee, and read for a couple of hours before everyone else gets up.
Give ordinary people the right tools, and they will design and build the most extraordinary things.
Our society has reoriented itself to the present moment. Everything is live, real time, and always-on. It’s not a mere speeding up, however much our lifestyles and technologies have accelerated the rate at which we attempt to do things. It’s more of a diminishment of anything that isn’t happening right now—and the onslaught of everything that supposedly is.
Technology is not an image of the world but a way of operating on reality. The nihilism of technology lies not only in the fact that it is the most perfect expression of the will to power... but also in the fact that it lacks meaning.
I find that writing unit tests actually increases my programming speed
We're the new power, come to replace the old. Cameras in the head, children with microchips, spin doctors rewriting reality as it happens.
Because the Internet is so new, we still don't really understand what it is. We mistake it for a type of publishing or broadcasting, because that's what we're used to. So people complain that there's a lot of rubbish online, or that it's dominated by Americans, or that you can't necessarily trust what you read on the Web.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.