Steampunk

I'd love to do a decent write up on the genre/culture/movement of steampunk someday, so I thought I might as well do some jotting down on livejournal, to be later cleaned off and combined into a real write-up.

The primary trait of steampunk-related world view that stands out most of all is the opening of possibilities. In a way it would be possible to consider steampunk as a reaction against the previous era of popularized digital cyberpunk, where the population became introverted in self-imposed blurring of the boundaries between the real and the virtual. Instead of wondering around in clearly imperfect landscapes, steampunkers are attempting to create in reality what the incomplete practice of the virtual reality haven't been able to execute, on the accounts of both the technology and economy.

Simply put, steampunk is the movement of people who refuses to draw their dreams in ephemeral numbers and abstractions, instead opting to create the vision in the reality, using the pieces of the reality already here. The very idea of the linkage between the world and the human mind is at the heart of the attraction of the steampunk, the belief that what you dream in your heart will be able to come true without substitutions of the virtual reality. In that way, steampunk is intimately linked with the artscience movement and biohackery, both of which are results of the post-industrial modern age, where things and ideas are both designed to be mass-produced and malleable to the extent that they act as components to the whim of the wielder regardless of the original intention of the things and ideas themselves.

The analysis of the steampunk on many levels seem to be representative of the modern zeitgeist. Something is happening on global scale under the surface of the superficial events and advances of the world that is redefining the relationship between the humanity and the world, the relationship between the body and the mind...



More or less a confusing jumble I thought up in a few minutes, but it'll still prove to be a suitable introduction in understanding of the steampunk culture and all its requisite/resulting cultural and scientific significance in this world. I must also note that what I've written so far is more on the lines of pertaining to the promises of the steampunk, not what it is at this moment in time.