With any new advancement, too much of it can be dangerous especially in the wrong hands. Technology is one of those advancements. We can see today in our world that technology is everywhere and has become a main structure in society. It not only makes our lives easier but also adds an experience to simple things. For example looking at a motion ad playing on the screens in the train stations. With all the fun that comes with technology there also comes bad things. Many harmful weapons can be made now and are almost accessible to anyone to use. Reading “Filippo Tommaso Marinetti,The Founding and Manifesto of Futurism (1909)”, Marinetti talks about the advancement of technology and how he would like to use it for war. You can see in some of the descriptions in the text he sounds almost aggressive and strongly believes that weapons and war is the best use of this new technology. For example, “We want to glorify -war the only cure for the world- militarism, patriotism, the destructive gesture of the anarchists, the beautiful ideas which kill, and contempt for woman.” I can see how Marinetti glorifies the idea of war and the use of weapons and how technology can help with that. Although I may not agree with him, I can however see how such an advancement to come out during his time period could be exciting and hold so many opportunities for the future.
Reading, “Aleksandr Rodchenko, Varvara Stepanova, Aleksei Gan, Who We Are: Manifesto of the Constructivist Group (c. 1922)”, Rodchenko shows how constructivism emerged from technological advancements. He transformed himself from an artist to an engineer to a designer. He is all three of those things and it shows through his style of work. In the reading it states, “He embraced, redefined, and elevated graphic design as an essential force in society.” He believed that technology could benefit society and that design especially can make technology more convenient. One line in the poem that I found particularly interesting is, “Now-Artists relax with technology” I think this definitely relates to our world today since most art is now digital. A lot of art including design is done on the computer and is much easier to work with.
Technology necessary isn’t a alway a mechanical or technological item, it can be something as simple as a pencil. It is a tool that helps a person do a certain thing. Reading “El Lissitzky, Our Book (1926)” he mentions how an invention is something that has a different variation over time but pretty much is still the same thing. We can see this in our world today with many different things like the invention of the cell phone. There’s many different phone types like Apple and Samsung with many different advanced functions as a new phone comes out every year, but the main point is that it’s a cell phone and does the same thing as the previous phones have which is helping you communicate with someone else. Even though when a new invention was just made it doesn’t always mean that they were the poorest quality. Photography is one example where this applies because even when it was just developed, early photographs were high quality. You can see this in a daguerreotype because the images are made on a metal sheet but are sharp and high in detail. The only advancement that happened over time was transferring the camera into the digital world.
