Notes Design

You heard it from Bruce Sterling first: Design Observer Hates Steampunk

(((Man, this is priceless. The backlash has begun! Oh wait a sec -- steampunk is "back" by definition, so maybe this pained screed is better described as a "frontlash.")))

(((Maybe Randy Nakamura would like "steampunk" better if it was called "Eamespunk" and involved making computers out of bent plywood.)))

Link: Design Observer.
"In its essence Steampunk seems suburban in its attitude: nostalgic for an imagined, non-existent past, politically quietist, and culturally insular hidden behind cul-de-sacs of carefully styled anachronisms that let in no chaos or ferment. The larger, more impossible questions are missing. How would the Victorian imagination conceive and execute a functioning computer? The answer must be more interesting than adding wood veneers to your laptop or turning a mouse into a contraption of gears that looks more like a medieval torture device.

"We are being taken for rubes...."

!

I think Nakamura got up on the wrong side of the bed.
More after the jump.