The lectures “The Founding and Manifesto of Futurism” (Filippo Tommaso Marinetti), “Who We Are: Manifesto of the Constructivist Group” (Aleksandr Rodchenko, Varvara Stepanova, Aleksei Gan), and “Our Book” (El Lissitzky) talk about his point of vision of the irruption of new technology in society and the changes into the art world and design. All three authors romanticize the new technology because they see technology as a tool to make real their ideas, change society, and break with the past rules. 

In the text “Who We Are: Manifesto of the Constructivist Group”, Rodchenko empowers technology and states the new roles of the artist that uses the technology as a tool. He wrote

“We didn’t create technology.

We didn’t create man.

but we,

Artists yesterday

constructors today,

1. we processed

the human being

2. we organize

technology

1. we discovered

2. propagate

3. cleanout

4. merge

previously—Engineers relaxed with art

now—Artists relax with technology”.

Rodchenko says that the world is not the same, therefore the world of art and design is not the same either, it’s becoming more rational, functional, and useful. Everything tends to move forward and leave the old ideas and rules of the past.

El Lissitzky also talks about technology and how this can change the books and our way of communicating. He talks about the dematerialization of our way of communication. He gives as an example the letters that use paper, envelopes, ink, etc., and then comes the telephone to make it easier to communicate with other people. And this happens with the internet and smartphones. I suppose that El Lissitzky would have liked to see the evolution of our form of communication that we have now. At the beginning of this century, everything needed a cable to function, now we have smartphones with long batteries durability (unless you have an old iPhone like mine) and maybe in a possible future, we can communicate with implanted microchips or something similar. And now with the idea of the metaverse, it seems that it is not even necessary to be in body present to be at parties, meetings, etc. I believe that if technology and other factors (such as political events or historical events) are capable of changing society, the rules of art and designers must also change.