Vintage Tomorrows

Chapter 1. A Futurist and a Cultural Historian Walk into a Bar

It begins, like so many great ideas, over a beer. A futurist and a cultural historian have a pint in Seattle and start talking about the future and the past. They’re both technologists, so it’s hardly surprising when the conversation drifts into the topic of steampunk, a modern day mash-up of the future and the past, technology and culture.

The historian says that like the Beat Generation in the 1950s and the “hippies” in the 1960s, steampunk is a counterculture. It’s a movement that gives us insight into how our culture as a whole is changing. Not only that, but it’s telling us something specific about technology.

If you wanted to join the Beat scene, you had to know North ...