Report of the Manifesto

I have heard that the Futurism approach was a aggressive, but I never thought that it would be this almost violent. They talk about forgetting the past and creating a future, which it is actually very similar to New Media, but in this harsh way. This reminds me of Ant Farm’s Media Burn: big, simple, forward-looking, and in-your-face kind of work. However, Media Burn describes many problems in smooth way: the media monopoly between the lines. Futurism talk more about burning libraries (metaphorically, I hope).

This library subject reminds me that time changes. The author mentions how important is the library, which embarks all of our past and much more. No matter how old this writing is, it is not outdated by its content, however, things are changing. The importance of a library back there is it what is now the internet for us: at the very bottom, a fountain of information. “Burning” or taking away the internet would affect more people than a library back then. Also, the internet does not only keep track of the past, informs of the present, predicts the future, but give access to many more people than before. Knowing how to read and having enough money to buy the newspaper was what most people could do back then. People now can comments, interact, change, and make an impact more widely and affective than before, which at the end, it creates a media monopoly, and back to Ant Farm’s Media Burn.

Over all, this writing has a tone of energy and aggressive. It seems that the author does not care what other think, does not care whatever is the way, he will do whatever he wants in the way he wants, and does not care what other think after they are gone. However, there is a foreshadow idea: they are not the first group that does this (go against everything) in history, and will not be the last.

It seems as the Futurism cherish things that New Media does not: technology, war, and violent abstraction. Unlike the innovative tone of the essay, New Media also goes for innovative while using the past: ready-made, found objects, collage, anything. Both group can be as similar or different as we want them to be, but at the very end, everybody wants to be, just remembered, somehow.