Stephenson (untintentionally) on Steampunk

[yendi]

Neal Stephenson's In the Beginning. . . Was the Command Line is not exactly his greatest work (and has aged poorly since it was released in 1999), often coming across at times as a giant "get off my lawn" rant.

But it's still well-written, because it's by Stephenson. And I love this bit:

If the VCR had been invented a hundred years ago, it would have come with a thumbwheel to adjust the tracking and a gearshift to change between forward and reverse, and a big cast-iron handle to load or eject the cassettes. It would have had a big analog clock on the front of it, and you would have set the time by moving the hands around on the dial.

Because that's how the best steampunk works, aesthetically -- it's not just something with cool gears attached; it's something designed to work with the user interfaces people of the time would have expected.

Comments

[mfree.livejournal.com]

Ah... I've seen VCRs invented *30* years ago that had a thumbwheel to adjust the tracking, a gearshift to change between forward and reverse (the drum servo wasn't electrical, it was an interrupter mechanism on the gearset, i.e. the direction button were tied to the geartrain a la 'shift lever') and a big metal handle to raise the top-load mechanism (ok, so it preloaded the spring and set the geartrain to unwrap the tape from the drum, wind it in, and prep to eject).

But it also had a mechanical counter with a reset pushbutton... which is essentially an analog clock that you change by moving it directly.

There is nothing in a VCR that couldn't have been done a hundred years ago with the exception of the heads and signal path, and 80 years ago (1930) we could have done the signal path.

Isn't technology wonderful?

[yendi]

Yeah, I had an early model with a wheel, too, but no gearshift, alas.

[wednesday]

I'm really hoping that, about a hundred years from now, someone picks up whatever suffix replaces -punk and writes fantastical fiction about our quaint turn-of-the-century technologies. LED clocks everywhere! Remote controls! Wires!

Probably it will look a lot like Shadowrun, but with more clocks.

Jackhop!