Steampunk Comes Of Age

An assemblage of fashion, retro-technology and scientific nostalgia as cluttered as a Victorian inventor's lab could soon take over the world. Steampunk, which has exploded in popularity across the internet in the last couple of years, is going mainstream. The Boston Globe has a story about Datamancer and his amazing Victoriana laptops, which tracks rapidly into discussion of what might be the first cultural fad to emerge from the twin-barrelled blunderbus of science fiction and nerd-dom.

"In their embrace of the toothy cog and the sooty pipe, this guild of steampunk hackers represents a rebellion of sorts against our iPhone moment. It's a time of technological wonders: flat-panel TVs you can hang like paintings; forms of instant communication to almost anywhere in the world; and phones no bigger than a wallet that play music and help you find your way in a forest. But in all this new technology there is nothing lasting to appreciate: Each new version is obsolescent the moment it appears, and all of it is literally superficial..."

Buff away the patina on what otherwise looks like an obsession with the obsolescent, and you find that it's all about wanting technology that lasts, where obsolescence isn't determined in advance by a marketing department.

The Age of Steampunk [Boston Globe]