Personally I prefer functionally tactile artifacts to imitation tactile artifacts, but both of them do look pretty cool. (Imagine the difference between a mechanical wristwatch and an electronic wristwatch which has an internal speaker emit a ticking sound. The electronic wristwatch keeps better time, but if you're going for extravagantly wasteful obsolete technology, then go for the freaking gold.)
I find this USB stick distasteful. It's not mechanical, all the gears do nothing. The designer took parts that had a precise function and rearranged them into something useless for appearance's sake.
This is probably a weird reaction, but maybe other hackers felt the same way.
No, it's not just you. Mrs Browl and I felt similar disappointment...as she said, he only had to get one wheel to move and then connect others. Which would still have been aesthetic rather than functional, but would have served the function of showing you it was alive.
I agree entirely! I see a lot of 'steampunk' thinks like this pop up on the MAKE Magazine blog (and similar) and have always found it somewhat onanistic, despite the face-value beauty of some of the pieces.
In the end, I feel that form should follow function. Making something like this look like it should be functioning in ways that it never will perhaps just serves to outline its mundanity.
(Ooh err, I've probably gone and thought about it too much again.)
I feel much worse about it when car companies or furniture makers try to make one material look like another. Faux wood, faux leather, ect. I consider the steam punk aesthetic to be purely ornamental. That the ornaments may appear at first glance to have some practical purpose doesn't detract from the overall aesthetic for me.
21 comments
[ 4.5 ms ] story [ 65.0 ms ] threadhttp://www.datamancer.net/steampunklaptop/steampunklaptop.ht...
Personally I prefer functionally tactile artifacts to imitation tactile artifacts, but both of them do look pretty cool. (Imagine the difference between a mechanical wristwatch and an electronic wristwatch which has an internal speaker emit a ticking sound. The electronic wristwatch keeps better time, but if you're going for extravagantly wasteful obsolete technology, then go for the freaking gold.)
This is probably a weird reaction, but maybe other hackers felt the same way.
It still looked pretty cool, though. I'm curious to see what else could be done along these lines. The laptop patio11 posted looks incredible.
Perhaps in version #4.
In the end, I feel that form should follow function. Making something like this look like it should be functioning in ways that it never will perhaps just serves to outline its mundanity.
(Ooh err, I've probably gone and thought about it too much again.)
The idea of selling that for $10 seems almost criminal! Actually, even $165 sounds low, considering the time and parts he put into it.