An aging contraption hurtling into the future
November 1, 2024 2:00 AM Subscribe
But what if the world really is constructed that way? In that case, it could be a mistake to put too much faith in digital perfection. We might need to fiddle with our technology more than we think. And we might also want to see it differently—less as an emanation from the future, and more like an inheritance from the past, with all the problems that entails. from Could Steampunk Save Us? [The New Yorker; ungated]
I keep thinking about the metaphor of the fairing around a steam locomotive in this interview of Jane Jacobs by James Howard Kunstler:posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 3:19 AM on November 1 [6 favorites]
It’s true that the workings of things we use are increasingly hidden. There was a time when I knew pretty well all the components of my car and virtually every file on my pc, and could adjust them myself (had to, in many cases). Not now.
But does that mean we think of the modern online world as a flawless machine that never needs adjustment? Not so sure about that.
posted by Phanx at 3:40 AM on November 1 [3 favorites]
But does that mean we think of the modern online world as a flawless machine that never needs adjustment? Not so sure about that.
posted by Phanx at 3:40 AM on November 1 [3 favorites]
My experience with the steampunk aesthetic was always more “obscurity through complexity” than any sort of clarity just because you could see a bunch of mechanical guts.
posted by Thorzdad at 5:30 AM on November 1 [3 favorites]
posted by Thorzdad at 5:30 AM on November 1 [3 favorites]
Yeah, modern "steampunk aesthetics" is very much about "glue some crummy gears on it and affect a mock-Edwardian pseudo-intellectual vocabulary". I'm not that impressed with the NYT article in the post, which is why I thought that perhaps bringing in Jacobs could help the discussion a little.
To wit: if some sort of "steampunk" were to save us, how could that look? I'd argue that it could come as a form-follows-function exposure of mechanism to democratise access to the systems we use. They wouldn't have to be absurd Heath Robinson/Rube Goldberg hacks, but just "get used to watching this: it may not be as complex as you expected!"
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 6:10 AM on November 1 [3 favorites]
To wit: if some sort of "steampunk" were to save us, how could that look? I'd argue that it could come as a form-follows-function exposure of mechanism to democratise access to the systems we use. They wouldn't have to be absurd Heath Robinson/Rube Goldberg hacks, but just "get used to watching this: it may not be as complex as you expected!"
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 6:10 AM on November 1 [3 favorites]
Just Glue Some Gears On It (And Call It Steampunk)
posted by DataPacRat at 6:39 AM on November 1 [4 favorites]
posted by DataPacRat at 6:39 AM on November 1 [4 favorites]
> We imagine that people used to live among eccentric, fiddly, physical gizmos, whereas now we navigate a network of infallible devices animated by code.
Lolwut?
I am not sure who or what TFA is for. As a technology person, it strikes me as a not-very-wise look at technology.
posted by Aardvark Cheeselog at 8:03 AM on November 1 [8 favorites]
Lolwut?
I am not sure who or what TFA is for. As a technology person, it strikes me as a not-very-wise look at technology.
posted by Aardvark Cheeselog at 8:03 AM on November 1 [8 favorites]
I keep thinking about the metaphor of the fairing around a steam locomotive in this interview of Jane Jacobs by James Howard Kunstler
Ah, vintage Kunstler, back before he went off the deep end of Trump loving, pandemic denying, insane right-wing conspiracy-theory batshittery in 2020. I check his website every so often out of morbid curiosity, and it has only been getting worse over time.
posted by fimbulvetr at 8:13 AM on November 1 [5 favorites]
Ah, vintage Kunstler, back before he went off the deep end of Trump loving, pandemic denying, insane right-wing conspiracy-theory batshittery in 2020. I check his website every so often out of morbid curiosity, and it has only been getting worse over time.
posted by fimbulvetr at 8:13 AM on November 1 [5 favorites]
Geez, there's a lot of hating in this thread that's going out of its way to avoid the point of the article entirely, and I don't know why. I guess because some guy with an affectation and a cravat annoyed you one time? Anyway, setting aside the (arguably) misused label, specific details of the esthetic they're describing are I think important: exposed mechanisms, visible implementation details and a sense of collective cultural ownership of the mechanisms of society, not just the machines in it.
It's an argument that should resonate strongly with anyone who cares about how the ideals of open source, the right to repair and how well-functioning civil democracies work, and I think it's a good one. We should be able to see into and understand the tools and technologies that shape our lives and societies. The mechanism should be on display, not hidden in back rooms or service hallways of the world.
This is a noble idea that deserves to be a practice that informs an esthetic, and even if "steampunk" isn't - again, arguably - the right term for that esthetic, there's something real here, a counterargument to the "AI-on-iPad" vision of the future in which it is functionally impossible to see how anything works or do anything about it even if you could.
posted by mhoye at 8:28 AM on November 1 [14 favorites]
It's an argument that should resonate strongly with anyone who cares about how the ideals of open source, the right to repair and how well-functioning civil democracies work, and I think it's a good one. We should be able to see into and understand the tools and technologies that shape our lives and societies. The mechanism should be on display, not hidden in back rooms or service hallways of the world.
This is a noble idea that deserves to be a practice that informs an esthetic, and even if "steampunk" isn't - again, arguably - the right term for that esthetic, there's something real here, a counterargument to the "AI-on-iPad" vision of the future in which it is functionally impossible to see how anything works or do anything about it even if you could.
posted by mhoye at 8:28 AM on November 1 [14 favorites]
We imagine that people used to live among eccentric, fiddly, physical gizmos, whereas now we navigate a network of infallible inscrutable devices animated by executed cheaply in code.
More accurate I think. I get reminded of this every time I try to fix an appliance. My Mom has top-loading, mostly mechanical washer and dryer that are going on 40 years old, and just keep working, whereas our washer, dryer, and toaster-oven had stupid control board failures before they hit a decade old.
There was a period where much of technology was physical and comprehensible to most people with a practical aptitude or interest. See: any shade-tree mechanic or any farmer, up to the 90's or so, before appliances, cars and tractors became mostly user-unfixable.
Still, I don't think there's any steampunk equivalent for smartphones; the networking, and the device as both node and virtualized multifunction tool, are the point. And yes, there are now new vulnerabilities and single points of failure, but as mhoye points out, the answer is less obscurity and more understanding, such as embodied in open-source code.
posted by Artful Codger at 8:41 AM on November 1 [5 favorites]
More accurate I think. I get reminded of this every time I try to fix an appliance. My Mom has top-loading, mostly mechanical washer and dryer that are going on 40 years old, and just keep working, whereas our washer, dryer, and toaster-oven had stupid control board failures before they hit a decade old.
There was a period where much of technology was physical and comprehensible to most people with a practical aptitude or interest. See: any shade-tree mechanic or any farmer, up to the 90's or so, before appliances, cars and tractors became mostly user-unfixable.
Still, I don't think there's any steampunk equivalent for smartphones; the networking, and the device as both node and virtualized multifunction tool, are the point. And yes, there are now new vulnerabilities and single points of failure, but as mhoye points out, the answer is less obscurity and more understanding, such as embodied in open-source code.
posted by Artful Codger at 8:41 AM on November 1 [5 favorites]
mhoye, I'm not sure how we're failing to engage with the article. It touched on some of the ideas in the Jacobs quote, but then spent a lot of time valorising complexity without any real payoff. My point was that if we took the Jacobsian skirt off the locomotive, we may be inspired to design the device to have a more maintainable layout, more reliable parts, and more standard supply chains. I'd rather have that than twelve million gears hooked up to an alien building that rotates slowly.
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 9:53 AM on November 1 [3 favorites]
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 9:53 AM on November 1 [3 favorites]
There was a period where much of technology was physical and comprehensible to most people with a practical aptitude
Chris Staecker's excellent youtube channel about antique calculators and computation methods occasionally has a "retorts" video where he gives mostly snarky replies to comments made on other videos. Pretty recently he did a video on a pocket sundial. He made a retorts video (relevant section) where he responded to people commenting on how much smarter people were in the past because of the existence of things like pocket sundials. His response, that relatively normal person can at least have a solid conceptual understanding of how a pocket sundial is built and works, and that it's possible for a single educated person to conceptualize and construct by themselves, which is not possible with a smartphone and it's associated infrastructure. I think that this gets to one of the things described in the posted article, that because we can see and relatively easily understand the mechanism of older things, we can also understand what is needed to preserve that world. the thousands of layers of abstraction and complexity needed to make the modern world run are no longer understandable as a whole and are unappreciated other than as magic.
Steampunk adjacent (climatepunk?) author Paolo Bacigalupi also touched on this in Pump Six (summary) kindof also explores this idea of people not understanding their own world, and so not appreciating the complexity of it's needs (although for differnet reasons).
posted by Dr. Twist at 10:39 AM on November 1 [5 favorites]
Chris Staecker's excellent youtube channel about antique calculators and computation methods occasionally has a "retorts" video where he gives mostly snarky replies to comments made on other videos. Pretty recently he did a video on a pocket sundial. He made a retorts video (relevant section) where he responded to people commenting on how much smarter people were in the past because of the existence of things like pocket sundials. His response, that relatively normal person can at least have a solid conceptual understanding of how a pocket sundial is built and works, and that it's possible for a single educated person to conceptualize and construct by themselves, which is not possible with a smartphone and it's associated infrastructure. I think that this gets to one of the things described in the posted article, that because we can see and relatively easily understand the mechanism of older things, we can also understand what is needed to preserve that world. the thousands of layers of abstraction and complexity needed to make the modern world run are no longer understandable as a whole and are unappreciated other than as magic.
Steampunk adjacent (climatepunk?) author Paolo Bacigalupi also touched on this in Pump Six (summary) kindof also explores this idea of people not understanding their own world, and so not appreciating the complexity of it's needs (although for differnet reasons).
posted by Dr. Twist at 10:39 AM on November 1 [5 favorites]
fimbulvetr: Even in the early 2000s, Kunstler was very much the character of a shitposter who delighted in "HAHA U MAD" antics. He used to visit transportation departments in the Deep South and describe the effect of their highways programmes on local towns in terms of improvised surgical abortion procedures, just to watch their faces go red. He was definitely someone who caught the attention of GenX urbanists, and gave us a bit of bravado, but perhaps he had a bit too much of his own to spare.
Even in 2004, the really strong rethink-the-car's-role-in-cities folks at the universities I went to kind of sighed when his name came up. He'd burned a lot of bridges.
But yes, he handled that interview with respect, as I think he understood he was talking to someone who wouldn't put up with any shit from him. Would that he had such moderating influences on him throughout his career.
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 11:22 AM on November 1 [2 favorites]
Even in 2004, the really strong rethink-the-car's-role-in-cities folks at the universities I went to kind of sighed when his name came up. He'd burned a lot of bridges.
But yes, he handled that interview with respect, as I think he understood he was talking to someone who wouldn't put up with any shit from him. Would that he had such moderating influences on him throughout his career.
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 11:22 AM on November 1 [2 favorites]
I have an appreciation of the modern world that is kind of incompatible with steampunk, but I think they mostly hid the working machinations because it's dangerous to be left out in the open, and even if it weren't, it's a maintenance nightmare to expose moving things to the climate. Dangerous as in anything that comes close to a bunch of hard working, moving gears is going to get messed up, and we don't want small mistakes to become amputations.
I think many people 'understand' cell phones just fine, even if they couldn't help construct one personally.
I think the Jacobs pull quote has some validity to it (even though I think calling her the god of urbanism is appropriate, what with all the conflicting rules from page to page), in that we threw away the art of thoughtfulness and function, or at least subsumed human function to other things -ie: giant garages fronting tiny houses because cars reign supreme. Or a more personal example: the freakin' gym doors on middle schools, because the volleyball games are at night the front doors are closed, and the buildings are ones you probably haven't been to before.
But that's a piece that's missing right? Cars have gotten more and more awesome, but the places we surround them and the artifice of using them has gotten worse. How much does some paint cost to make that gym door impressive? Not much, it's cheaper, safer, lasts longer, but the care is gone. So find the dumpster. The gym door is probably close to that.
I think the modern world does 'care' less, about everything, but I'm not smart enough to fully explain why.
posted by The_Vegetables at 11:30 AM on November 1 [3 favorites]
I think many people 'understand' cell phones just fine, even if they couldn't help construct one personally.
I think the Jacobs pull quote has some validity to it (even though I think calling her the god of urbanism is appropriate, what with all the conflicting rules from page to page), in that we threw away the art of thoughtfulness and function, or at least subsumed human function to other things -ie: giant garages fronting tiny houses because cars reign supreme. Or a more personal example: the freakin' gym doors on middle schools, because the volleyball games are at night the front doors are closed, and the buildings are ones you probably haven't been to before.
But that's a piece that's missing right? Cars have gotten more and more awesome, but the places we surround them and the artifice of using them has gotten worse. How much does some paint cost to make that gym door impressive? Not much, it's cheaper, safer, lasts longer, but the care is gone. So find the dumpster. The gym door is probably close to that.
I think the modern world does 'care' less, about everything, but I'm not smart enough to fully explain why.
posted by The_Vegetables at 11:30 AM on November 1 [3 favorites]
I see the contrast as one of carefully planned, purpose-built devices versus general platforms used to do everything:
That mechanical watch might be a fiddly thing that needs adjustments, but it was designed from the ground up to keep time and there's not only a finite number of ways it needs to be fiddled with, but there are also a pretty small number of ways it can break.
The clock on my smartphone might be maintenance free, but it's a piece of software running on a general-purpose operating system that is itself running on a general-purpose computing platform. There's an entire universe of ways it could break from failed software updates meant to fix the font-rendering to some other application draining the battery me forgetting my password.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 11:43 AM on November 1 [3 favorites]
That mechanical watch might be a fiddly thing that needs adjustments, but it was designed from the ground up to keep time and there's not only a finite number of ways it needs to be fiddled with, but there are also a pretty small number of ways it can break.
The clock on my smartphone might be maintenance free, but it's a piece of software running on a general-purpose operating system that is itself running on a general-purpose computing platform. There's an entire universe of ways it could break from failed software updates meant to fix the font-rendering to some other application draining the battery me forgetting my password.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 11:43 AM on November 1 [3 favorites]
There is a funny sort of experience I have when dealing with bicycles. To me, a bicycle is a form of transport, not sport, and I need it to be reliable and available. I am not a bicycle mechanic, and do not intend to be. I have never fixed a puncture myself (three cheers to marathon plus tyres).
The original multi-gearing system for bicycles from around 1905 is the Sturmey-Archer planetary hub. Inside the rear hub is a ring-toothed gear, a central axle, and a "planet" gear that can translate rotation to or from the ring. Usually you have three speeds: 2:1, 1:1, and 1:2. Slow, direct drive, and fast. Simple. The whole thing is enclosed, and protected from rain. I often have my rear brakes in there as backpedal brakes, because it cuts down on the number of cables that can go wrong.
But in the middle of the 20th century, mech gears were invented. These are a pair of gears on a moving boom that drag a thinner chain to pop off of the current sprocket and onto a gear next to it. It lets you do much wider spreads of gearing than a planetary hub (I have an 8-speed hub and I skip a few gears because they feel "buzzy" to me), and are an absolute must for people going for speed or really huge hill-climbing reduction levels. Also you can shift the front of the chain as well as the back.
"Ah," my mech-gear-loving friends always tell me, "and that hub is a black box! The beauty of mech gears is that they're so easy to repair. When you drop your bike and they go out of alignment, all it takes is simple pocket tools to fix them!"
To which I pick my jaw back up and say "Sorry, did you say your bike breaks if you drop it funny? I'm sure they're fantastic fun to fix, but I'll keep the thing that doesn't break. Also did you notice that I've never broken a chain? That's because my chain doesn't need to bend sideways like yours does, and is built sturdy as a result!"
And the hilarious thing about this is that my "durable black box" is an invention from Literal Edwardian England, and their "simple exposed gear system" is an invention from the Cold War period.
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 12:01 PM on November 1 [6 favorites]
The original multi-gearing system for bicycles from around 1905 is the Sturmey-Archer planetary hub. Inside the rear hub is a ring-toothed gear, a central axle, and a "planet" gear that can translate rotation to or from the ring. Usually you have three speeds: 2:1, 1:1, and 1:2. Slow, direct drive, and fast. Simple. The whole thing is enclosed, and protected from rain. I often have my rear brakes in there as backpedal brakes, because it cuts down on the number of cables that can go wrong.
But in the middle of the 20th century, mech gears were invented. These are a pair of gears on a moving boom that drag a thinner chain to pop off of the current sprocket and onto a gear next to it. It lets you do much wider spreads of gearing than a planetary hub (I have an 8-speed hub and I skip a few gears because they feel "buzzy" to me), and are an absolute must for people going for speed or really huge hill-climbing reduction levels. Also you can shift the front of the chain as well as the back.
"Ah," my mech-gear-loving friends always tell me, "and that hub is a black box! The beauty of mech gears is that they're so easy to repair. When you drop your bike and they go out of alignment, all it takes is simple pocket tools to fix them!"
To which I pick my jaw back up and say "Sorry, did you say your bike breaks if you drop it funny? I'm sure they're fantastic fun to fix, but I'll keep the thing that doesn't break. Also did you notice that I've never broken a chain? That's because my chain doesn't need to bend sideways like yours does, and is built sturdy as a result!"
And the hilarious thing about this is that my "durable black box" is an invention from Literal Edwardian England, and their "simple exposed gear system" is an invention from the Cold War period.
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 12:01 PM on November 1 [6 favorites]
I am seeing more steampunk (e.g.; German clothing company), but of course I can't tell if that's just my adverzone.
There are *many* things that annoy me about the New Yorker article, starting with: thirty years, not old for a metal object; William Gibson, better on this topic than the article quoting him; NOTAM syntax, not inscrutable to pilots. Starting off with a whole lot of flat-white-coffee view from pretends-to-be-nowhere.
The turn to recognizing that our flat white rectangles depend on a lot of grime, or at least repairs, I appreciate. You have to start where you are! And we desperately need to value or at least *allow* operations and maintenance and repair! If assigning it brown and buttons helps, fine. Does it?
I bounced off most steampunk when I kept finding militarism and aristocracy instead of repair, let alone punk. But maybe it's changed while I wasn't looking?
posted by clew at 2:36 PM on November 1 [4 favorites]
There are *many* things that annoy me about the New Yorker article, starting with: thirty years, not old for a metal object; William Gibson, better on this topic than the article quoting him; NOTAM syntax, not inscrutable to pilots. Starting off with a whole lot of flat-white-coffee view from pretends-to-be-nowhere.
The turn to recognizing that our flat white rectangles depend on a lot of grime, or at least repairs, I appreciate. You have to start where you are! And we desperately need to value or at least *allow* operations and maintenance and repair! If assigning it brown and buttons helps, fine. Does it?
I bounced off most steampunk when I kept finding militarism and aristocracy instead of repair, let alone punk. But maybe it's changed while I wasn't looking?
posted by clew at 2:36 PM on November 1 [4 favorites]
> I bounced off most steampunk when I kept finding militarism and aristocracy instead of repair, let alone punk
That's what the admiration for the Victorian basically boils down to, isn't it
posted by Aardvark Cheeselog at 3:53 PM on November 1 [4 favorites]
That's what the admiration for the Victorian basically boils down to, isn't it
posted by Aardvark Cheeselog at 3:53 PM on November 1 [4 favorites]
Shouldn’t have to, there was plenty going on. Sells better than the subaltern, I guess.
posted by clew at 4:00 PM on November 1 [2 favorites]
posted by clew at 4:00 PM on November 1 [2 favorites]
Love me some well-executed steampunk objects. At best, those objects project an image of an alternative present, a romantic hint of how things might have been. But I never associated it to a democratizing view of technology. No ordinary person, whose time and energy are consumed by ordinary chores, is going to put so much care into any object. And no ordinary person, with ordinary resources, would waste their resources on such a bespoke object. Steampunk to me is variant of the eternal fantasy that we can surround ourselves with beautiful objects, each one of which precisely and gracefully made for one purpose (I also love art nouveau). Steampunk belongs in those montages at the beginning of films that tell the backstory. Or as one or two objects in my house.
posted by SnowRottie at 6:44 PM on November 1 [1 favorite]
posted by SnowRottie at 6:44 PM on November 1 [1 favorite]
Geez, there's a lot of hating in this thread that's going out of its way to avoid the point of the article entirely, and I don't know why.
Allow me to introduce you to MetaFilter.
posted by doctornemo at 7:04 PM on November 1 [2 favorites]
Allow me to introduce you to MetaFilter.
posted by doctornemo at 7:04 PM on November 1 [2 favorites]
My reading is that the article considers steampunk a heuristic to help us think through today's tech. The conclusion:
it’s not so hard to adjust our imaginations. After clicking Buy or Submit, we can take a moment to picture a labyrinthine, sometimes obscure process in action—people and machines working together, perhaps under unpleasant circumstances, to obey our command. After making a request of an A.I., we might imagine a forest of gears turning, intricately enmeshed, and wonder if they’re the right gears, and if they fit as they should, and if they’ve been inspected.
That's actually fun and can be productive. I teach my technology seminar students to think about interlocking technology systems, helping them trace them out when starting from an object (a train, a smartphone, etc). The gears+ steampunk vision might help some of them.
posted by doctornemo at 7:11 PM on November 1 [3 favorites]
it’s not so hard to adjust our imaginations. After clicking Buy or Submit, we can take a moment to picture a labyrinthine, sometimes obscure process in action—people and machines working together, perhaps under unpleasant circumstances, to obey our command. After making a request of an A.I., we might imagine a forest of gears turning, intricately enmeshed, and wonder if they’re the right gears, and if they fit as they should, and if they’ve been inspected.
That's actually fun and can be productive. I teach my technology seminar students to think about interlocking technology systems, helping them trace them out when starting from an object (a train, a smartphone, etc). The gears+ steampunk vision might help some of them.
posted by doctornemo at 7:11 PM on November 1 [3 favorites]
As an engineer who's currently CNC'ing plywood to make some interlocking, self-jigging furniture, I'm in the target aesthetic for steampunk. Yet I have to agree with Kate Beaton's "Brunel Is Tired of These Time Traveling Assholes" cartoon.
What we need is understandable, maintainable technology that people can connect with, own for low total lifetime expense and emissions, repair, repurpose, and reuse.
Instead of that, what we get is an aesthetic with cogs stuck on something brown with vague Victorian styling ignoring the imperialism and racism.
I mean, for fuck's sake:
Steampunk tables
Steampunk shelves
Steampunk boots
Steampunk bicycles
People rip on Harley Davidsons for being styling over engineering for rich boomers. Steampunk is just the same, but for people a couple of decades younger.
posted by happyinmotion at 7:14 PM on November 1 [5 favorites]
What we need is understandable, maintainable technology that people can connect with, own for low total lifetime expense and emissions, repair, repurpose, and reuse.
Instead of that, what we get is an aesthetic with cogs stuck on something brown with vague Victorian styling ignoring the imperialism and racism.
I mean, for fuck's sake:
Steampunk tables
Steampunk shelves
Steampunk boots
Steampunk bicycles
People rip on Harley Davidsons for being styling over engineering for rich boomers. Steampunk is just the same, but for people a couple of decades younger.
posted by happyinmotion at 7:14 PM on November 1 [5 favorites]
Some underrated aspects of steampunk as an aesthetic.
Things are hand-made, artisanal.
They are made from recyclable metal or biodegradable organic materials or inert ceramics and glass.
When new they are shiny and beautiful (brass, chrome, polished leather) and when old they have patina.
When the mechanism is complicated, they look complicated. (The whole cogs thing is because we long for intricate clockwork, impressive in its complexity and all the more so because it is visibly embodied in enmeshed parts. Cogs are gestures towards that from people who can't engineer things).
They aim to do something new and better and above all exciting. At some level, they are marvellous.
I think these things attract one to late Victorian machinery, and its imitators, as much as any desire to subjugate the natives. And we could have them without the nostalgia for colonialism/imperialism/hierarchy and that would be nice.
And things built in that spirit might be more maintainable and less wasteful, though some of the opaque black boxes of today are far more reliable because of their sealed and compact nature. It's worth thinking about.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 8:45 PM on November 1 [2 favorites]
Things are hand-made, artisanal.
They are made from recyclable metal or biodegradable organic materials or inert ceramics and glass.
When new they are shiny and beautiful (brass, chrome, polished leather) and when old they have patina.
When the mechanism is complicated, they look complicated. (The whole cogs thing is because we long for intricate clockwork, impressive in its complexity and all the more so because it is visibly embodied in enmeshed parts. Cogs are gestures towards that from people who can't engineer things).
They aim to do something new and better and above all exciting. At some level, they are marvellous.
I think these things attract one to late Victorian machinery, and its imitators, as much as any desire to subjugate the natives. And we could have them without the nostalgia for colonialism/imperialism/hierarchy and that would be nice.
And things built in that spirit might be more maintainable and less wasteful, though some of the opaque black boxes of today are far more reliable because of their sealed and compact nature. It's worth thinking about.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 8:45 PM on November 1 [2 favorites]
I'm kind of hoping that we can proceed further along Illich's lines when he wrote Tools For Conviviality. It's really hard to look at the tradeoffs between ease of repair, ease of use, durability, affordability, accessibility, and comprehensibility, and come away without sounding like a min-maxer out to valorise one at the cost of the others. We can look to the techniques of the past, and see the elegance of the way they combine a few elements with their own two hands to produce elaborate results, but without coming away sounding like suckless/RETVRN trad-fash.
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 5:55 AM on November 2 [2 favorites]
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 5:55 AM on November 2 [2 favorites]
What we need is understandable, maintainable technology that people can connect with, own for low total lifetime expense and emissions, repair, repurpose, and reuse.
I like this very much, especially for climate crisis reasons. Sounds very circular economy.
posted by doctornemo at 6:44 AM on November 2
I like this very much, especially for climate crisis reasons. Sounds very circular economy.
posted by doctornemo at 6:44 AM on November 2
I think the modern world does 'care' less, about everything, but I'm not smart enough to fully explain why.
I'm not sure it's that people care less. It's just that people are expected to care about so many more things, big and small, personal and public, in this modern world, and it's just emotionally and intellectually impossible to care deeply about it all.
posted by Thorzdad at 8:41 AM on November 3
I'm not sure it's that people care less. It's just that people are expected to care about so many more things, big and small, personal and public, in this modern world, and it's just emotionally and intellectually impossible to care deeply about it all.
posted by Thorzdad at 8:41 AM on November 3
No ordinary person, whose time and energy are consumed by ordinary chores, is going to put so much care into any object. And no ordinary person, with ordinary resources, would waste their resources on such a bespoke object.
Well, I don't know about you, but I waste a lot of time on the internet, and I spend a lot of my money on some total bullshit.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 4:25 PM on November 3
Well, I don't know about you, but I waste a lot of time on the internet, and I spend a lot of my money on some total bullshit.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 4:25 PM on November 3
We definitely need societies and technologies to become simpler, lower energy, and more reusable. I suggest Nate Hagens' The Great Simplificiation and Rachel Donald's Planet: Critical of course.
Yet, the term "steampunk" is a fantasy genre, an aesthetic, or even a musical style (previously), so imho too much baggage here. We've better terms already though..
Solarpunk and biopunk suggest retaining related technologies, even while civilizations radically simplifies. We rarely if ever hear peopel discuss simplifying full supply chains for solar and batteries, or biotechnology tools.
Low-tech captures the more extreme form, most analogous to steampunk, except more mussles than steam.
I suppose "collapse now and avoid the rush" capture the overall essence here most cleanly.
posted by jeffburdges at 3:54 PM on November 14
Yet, the term "steampunk" is a fantasy genre, an aesthetic, or even a musical style (previously), so imho too much baggage here. We've better terms already though..
Solarpunk and biopunk suggest retaining related technologies, even while civilizations radically simplifies. We rarely if ever hear peopel discuss simplifying full supply chains for solar and batteries, or biotechnology tools.
Low-tech captures the more extreme form, most analogous to steampunk, except more mussles than steam.
I suppose "collapse now and avoid the rush" capture the overall essence here most cleanly.
posted by jeffburdges at 3:54 PM on November 14
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