Friday, January 15, 2010

Steampunk

I'd never heard of Steampunk until earlier this week, when one of my co-workers passed me this link to the 12 coolest Steampunk gadgets. Steampunk, it turns out, is a category of science fiction that came into prominence in the 1980s and early 1990s to refer to works set in an era or world where steam power is still widely used—usually the 19th century, and often Victorian England, but with prominent elements of either science fiction or fantasy. Steampunk envisions fictional technological inventions like those found in the works of H. G. Wells and Jules Verne, or real technological developments like the computer occurring at an earlier date. A quick Google search reveals all sorts of websites devoted to Steampunk, including guides to modifying everyday items to create new Steampunk works of art...here's one example.

Here is a desktop PC as re-imagined in Steampunk:

And a close-up of the keyboard...

You need a mouse to use with your Steampunk PC, of course...


Not to mention an external USB drive to use for moving files...

There are websites devoted to building Steampunk devices, where you can find other interesting devices, like a Steampunk toilet...

And even ... uh ... intimate personal devices...

I knew that if I waited long enough, old stuff would come back into fashion. There's hope for Mike, Gilahi, and I.

Have a good day. Cartoon Saturday is coming.

Bilbo

7 comments:

John A Hill said...

Uh, Bilbo, there is no hope for Mike.

wv: (believe it or not) suppress

Gilahi said...

Steam? It's just a fad. Find me a mulepunk website.

Hale McKay said...

Interesting. I've read nearly all of the works of both Verne and Wells, but this is the first time I've heard it referred to as Steampunk.

I guess I've been a Steampunk junkie all these years and never knew it.

Jean-Luc Picard said...

Those computers look so stylish.

Mike said...

HEY! A new site - oddee.com. These are my kind of sites.

Leslie David said...

I was aware of the term cyberpunk but never steampunk. Still the gadgets have a certain beauty stemming from the time when it was OK to make something look pretty as well as being practical. :)

allenwoodhaven said...

Great post! Very interesting concept and I love the design aspect. If only things were built this way...