Imagine a world in which the concept of electricity was never fully grasped, where the steam engine reigned supreme and the electrical circuit was a pipe dream. The people of this world would never stop innovating and would adapt, as humans often do, to the limitations of their machinery. Therefore, monolithic machinations would be constructed for relatively simple problems that we might have today, and that Industrial style of clothes would never really fall out of the mainstream. Instead it would just become more modernized, rather than exiting our lives entirely. Furthermore, imagine this world as not just fiction but a reality unto itself that anyone can join in on, and you’ll have Steampunk. Steampunk isn’t popular because of the clothing or the artistic style, but rather it’s popular because it instills a sense of wonderment in its followers through the use of seemingly archaic technology that looks foreign and outlandish when compared to our modern day electronics.
Even with Steampunk’s mounting popularity, the question of what exactly is Steampunk still finds its way on people’s lips, and for good reason. To the outside observer, Steampunk may seem to be something entirely unapproachable at times simply because the outside observer may know nothing of the genre, and therefore feel uncomfortable around it. This lack of knowledge is understandable, Steampunk isn’t necessarily taught in schools and the ‘punk’ sub-cultures aren’t exactly mainstream. It can seem complex and is often misunderstood as merely an ‘Industrial’ fashion with a few quirks.
In fact, Steampunk itself is just a derivative of Cyberpunk, an entirely different sub-culture that focuses on fusing the present with the near-future, both of which b...
... middle of paper ...
...e when we start to think about how a television or computer would look if it were entirely powered by steam is what keeps people in the subculture, what drives it forward and what will catch the interest of a new generation of Steampunk fans.
Works Cited
Dahncke, Pasha Ray. “IBM Social Sentiment Index Predicts New Retail Trend in the Making.” IBM Industries & solutions. IBM, 14 Jan. 2013. Web. 12 Dec. 2013
Jeter, K.W. Letter to Locus Magazine. Apr. 1987. MS. Faren Miller. Locus Publications.
Mei, Jennifer. Steampunk Bonaparte. Fantasy-magazine.com. Jennifer Mei, 2011. Web. 12 Dec. 2013.
Mondelli, John. Blood, Sweat, and Tears. Perf. The Cog is Dead. The Cog is Dead. 27 April, 2010. Web. 12 Dec. 2013.
Sontag, Susan. “The Imagination of Disaster.” Reading Pop Culture A Portable Anthology. Ed. Jeff Ousborne. 1st ed. Boston. Bedford/St. Martin’s 2013. 316-333. Print
of how politics and the quest for personal power interact with a major natural disaster on one of the worlds's major rivers was quite rivetting. Once started, I found the book hard to put down.
In Justin Pearson's memoir, From the Graveyard of the arousal Industry, he recounts the events that occured from his early years of adolesence to the latter years of his adulthood telling the story of his unforgiving and candid life. Set in the late 1970s "Punk" rock era, From the Graveyard of the Arousal Industry offers a valuable perspective about the role culture takes in our lives, how we interact with it and how it differs from ideology.
In comparing the sixties and the nineties, my first thought was how much popular culture has changed since then and how different society is today. The strange thing is, the more I tried to differentiate between them, the more similarities I found. Both the sixties and the nineties were about youth, creativity, free-thinking, and expression. With the nineties coming to a close and the popularity of anything ?retro," I decided to compare the fashions, people, music, and issues that defined pop culture in the 1960?s and its influence on pop culture in the 1990?s.
novels often show the pros and cons of technology. In the book Fahrenheit 451, by Ray
When Dorothy was six years old, the Day family packed up for a long journey from New York City to the west coast. Her father’s job as a sports writer settled the family in Berkeley, California at first, and then in Oakland. Just as the children were starting to call California home, the 1906 San Francisco earthquake struck this new home, striking their hearts as well. This life-changing disaster was the first experience Dorothy had of people really getting involved with helping strangers. Unfortunately the help from neighbors was not enough to fix the permanent damage within the Days’ Californ...
One of the greatest qualities of humanity is the ability to respond to the circumstances and surroundings one might find themselves in at any given time. Authors convey this quality into literature constantly with their novels and articles. “The Most Dangerous Game” is a realistic fiction short story written by Richard Connell. “The Most Dangerous Game” is a stunning short story on the human condition, the dangers of blood-thirsty hunters, and defining the true meaning of a civilized person. Connell’s wrote his novel during the time period wealthy individuals enjoyed hunting animals. TV shows, magazine articles, and even movies are based off Connell’s story. Another example of a novel that responds to the environment is James Hurst’s realistic fiction short story, “The Scarlet Ibis”. “The Scarlet Ibis” is a tragic, realistic fiction that describes the hazards of pride, the terrors of being disparate from others, and the qualities of true brotherly love. “The Scarlet Ibis” was written in the 1960’s when handicapped people were treated differently than normal people. An additional volume worth analyzing is Guy de Maupassant’s realistic fiction, “The Necklace”. “The Necklace” is a narrative about a covetous woman who dreams for impervious goals, and realizes that being prosperous is not always as elitist is as it is made out to be. In reality during periods of great danger or fear, humans occasionally experience a rush of adrenaline that allows them to accomplish otherwise impossible tasks such as mothers lifting cars off of their children. Therefore, the human condition has the ability to overpower common sense and control emotions when the situation at hand requires action.
The overuse of technology is not good because people get alienated from reality. The characters in Fahrenheit 451 have a parlor room in their house which has large TV screens instead of walls. The main character, Guy Montag, is married to a woman named Mildred. Mildred calls the characters in the shows she watches her ¨family.¨ Mildred
So many opinions exist about what is and isn't Cyberpunk Fiction. Three elements have been (generally) agreed upon to be traits of the genre. They include reflections of the pop-culture of the eighties, combining of hard and soft technology, and an element of realism. Cyberpunk is more than an extension of Science Fiction, it is a literary movement that is growing and maturing. Though it has lost some of its young rawness, Cyberpunk remains a saucy defiance to the mainstream.
People are becoming more and more overly reliant to technology. They use it everyday in their lives. In the 'future, dystopian world' of the novel Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, people are shown to be highly reliant to technology, which can be compared to the similarly growing reliance to technology of the people in modern America today. Smartphones, televisions, and other gadgets like these has become more and more popular these days. This relates to the novel because the people in the US has become more reliant to these gadgets, which limits their social activities. The internet has become very important to the world, specially at work. Most work nowadays involves sending emails, research and more that requires internet. “When the internet is down, work is over for the day”. This conveys how necessary the internet has become for people to work.
I remember as a kid there was nothing more enchanting then going home to play video games. Before I knew it I had become enslaved by my video games. Back then I did not realize it but everything I did was influenced by my video games. Just as I didn’t realize the chains video games had tied around my legs, much of society doesn’t realize how they have become tied down and enslaved by technology. Technology really has come far since 1951. In 1951 it was only possible to hypothesize about futuristic technology just as Ray Bradbury did in his book Fahrenheit 451. However, Ray Bradbury would have never imagined the decisive role that technology has had upon children of the 21st century. Internet, video games, and television has a detrimental effect
The Arnoldian way of thinking in retro spec to popular culture is the popular culture is “the endeavor to know the best and to make this knowledge prevail for the good of all humankind” (Storey, 2014, pg. 18). For Arnold and Storey’s interpretation of his writings is that popular culture represents the best of the best for our values of society and what should be striven
“Before I start teaching you all Industrial Revolution, I have a question?”. My history teacher drifted towards the blackboard and wrote - “Who invented the Steam Engine?”
In the past, the purpose of clothing was solely to accentuate certain aspects of a body or to show wealth and power. The 1940s showed a time of class - men wore suits for their office jobs and women wore long dresses and big hats. During this time, women began to play with more expressive coloring while still remaining modest. Hair was either full of volume or styled very close to the face. In the 1950s, men wore leather jackets and women mostly donned poodle skirts or thin pencil skirts. The 1960s and ‘70s began the mismatched “hippie” era - flower print, tie dye, mini skirts with oversized sweaters, and fringes. Finally, the ‘80s brought looks very familiar to many teenagers today. Many wore jelly shoes, neon clothing, chokers, and high waisted jeans. Many of these clothing styles were popularized from music styles, world messages and crises, and role models in pop culture. Today, fashion comes, goes and repeats a few decades later. In the average teenager’s lifetime, big hair from the ‘40s, leather jackets from the ‘50s, fringes and tassels from the ‘60s, tie dye from the ‘70s, and jelly shoes from the ‘80s have been ever-present. If style had never shifted so drastically, they would have never been so closely followed by today’s younger generations, and the style could have been lost forever. As the years pass, people find inspiration from previous popular styles and merge them into what is popular today to make it their own. Clothing and style is an endless cycle of changing and morphing, but remembering the origin and reasoning behind the styles in the first
Stump, Colleen Shea, Kevin Feldman, Joyce Armstrong Carroll, and Edward E. Wilson. "The Epic." Prentice Hall
In Conclusion William Gibson created a cyberpunk/ postmodernism tale that has blurred not only the physical state between mechanics and human anatomy, but has as well blurred the line between the natural and virtual world. He is making the reader contemplate how both software and hardware have influenced the natural world. Gibson’s fictional world would have not been possible without the existence of software and hardware, that is why the distinction between them is very crucial and play a different part within the text. Without these two things, the reader would not be able to comprehend and relate to Gibson’s view on how our society is interlocking with the advances of technology and the normality of today will no longer exist in the future.